As a Literacy teacher, we have to teach all things related to reading and writing... grammar, reading strategies, writing strategies, discussion techniques, presentation techniques, vocabulary... the list goes on and on and luckily I have 100 minutes a day to do it. The seventh and eighth grade teachers only get 50 minutes! Their units are also staggered differently than ours, but that's not what I'm thankful for at the moment.
I've always done writing conferences and I've practiced and tried and restructured and whatever reading conferences. Book groups are so hard to do. Don't let anyone sell you on it being easy. IT takes a well-structured classroom to get those kinds of things going. And this year... I finally did it! I have been structuring time in reading to get things done and it has been great sitting there and talking to my kids. Some of them are CRAZY excited about their books. Others have questions. It... it has just been wonderful, when I can get them done. I leave feeling good about things, because I took the time to have those moments.
Same thing with writing conferences. I now have a little chair next to my desk. I get to talk to the students and we discuss their story. They tell me things... they share their vision... I try to give them advice, but by the end of things I feel good about myself. But what they do once they leave my presence is a whole other story and I'm not going to go into that, because I want to bask in the glow of really putting my all into conferencing this year and how it has made me feel great, despite being a ton of work! Now that it's going... we're in a groove.
So no matter how much I complain or get frustrated, I just have to remember that it was worth it... at least for the first week. Ha!
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