Love These Organizational Writing Charts

Many people consider writing one of the hardest subjects to teach.  Writing Workshop has released some teachers from the fear of teaching writing, but writing workshop has some problems of its own if we’re not careful.  One of the biggest obstacles I hear teachers talk about is keeping up with who is doing what.  I first came upon the idea of Status of the Class when I read Nancie Atwell’s book In the Middle.  In it she shows a Status of the Class chart she used to keep up with where each student was in their own writing process.  It made a huge difference for me.  After adopting her chart or something like it, I was much better able to keep up with where my students were…who was lagging behind and who was speeding ahead.

Status of the Class

This chart, Status of the Class, consists of your students’ names down the left side of the paper and the days of the week across the top.  Every day during writing workshop, you ask your students what they’re working on for the day.  If a student says he needs a conference, you write a “C” across from his name under the correct day of the week.  If he says he’s continuing to write a piece, you write a “W”.  If he’s revising, write “R”.  For editing write an “E”.  For planning a new piece, write “P”.  The last column can be for comments you want to remember.

The other way this chart helped me was that it allowed me to see at a glance who never wanted to conference, who was always writing but never had anything to show for it, and who was on track.  It made a huge difference in my ability to keep my students moving along at a productive pace.

Reading Conference Tracker

I went through at least a dozen different organizers to keep track of my conferences.  Each one had its pros and cons.  You’ve got to find the one that works for you by just experimenting.  I found mine by visiting a class in another county.  The entire county was adopting Lucy Calkins writing philosophy.  I tweaked what I saw, so it would work for me, but basically this is what the teachers used and loved.  This chart, Reading Conference Sheet, is divided into blocks which can be used for individual students or for different conferences for the same student. On the example I’ve given, it’s set up for a different student’s conference to go in each block.  If it were set up to use for the same student, instead of the word “name” I would write the word “date”, and instead of “week of” I would write “Name”.  Regardless, each box would contain what my student was working on and what she felt she needed help with.  Then I would write what I told her and what she needed to work on for our next conference.  Example:

Name: Monica

Story summary; Help on condense

Show summary of last read aloud

Next time middle section cond.

 Monica was working on writing the summary of a story she had read and was having trouble condensing it into a manageable size.  I showed her the back of the last class read aloud, so she could see what types of events were left out.  We talked about it briefly.  Then I told her I wanted her to work on condensing the middle portion of her summaries.  From there I went to the next student who had signed up for a conference.  Of course, I always allowed myself the freedom to conference with a student who hadn’t asked for it.

Try these two ideas and let us know what you think.  Or if you have something that works for you, please share it!  We all learn better from each other!