Coby's Reflection to Graves Chapter 13

In chapter thirteen of his book, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, Donald Graves gives an example of how a teacher should spend his or her time in the classroom during a writing block. He suggests that the first five minutes or so should be used to do quick visit conferences like what we have been practicing in Greg’s class. The children who are talked to during these quick visits are not chose randomly, rather a review of their work the night before shows that they would benefit the most from a visit. After the quick visits are over a small group of about four children who can be anywhere in the writing process will be chosen to have a small group conference. These children are each given a chance to have one-on-one attention with the teacher while the others either write or help each other out. Meanwhile the rest of the students are working alone or conferencing together. When this is over the teacher holds a fifteen minute special conference that is more like a seminar on a specific subject. He or she invites five students who he or she thinks will benefit from this seminar and allows anyone else who wants to come to join in as well. The final ten minutes is an all class sharing period where three or four children share their writing with the class. They can either: read their writing, ask for help, or state how they feel about it. After this is done the lesson is over for the day.

This is a nice way to work with students, keep control and guidance over them, and allow them the freedom to be at any stage of the writing process. Not everyone will go at the same rate and it is really nice to have a method that will allow everyone to go slow when they need to and to speed up when they want to. I look forward to one day using this method in a classroom.