The Power of Purposeful Talk in the Primary-Grade Writing Conference

It was a typical October afternoon in Maggie Malone's (all names used are pseudonyms) first-grade classroom. The hustle and bustle of the lunch period had ended, and she and her students moved into one of their favorite times of the day-writer's workshop (Calkins, 2003). Moments earlier, Ms. Malone had finished a whole-group mini-lesson at the carpet and dismissed students to their writing spots. After answering a few wayward questions and scanning the room to assure herself that all students transitioned into independent writing time successfully, Ms. Malone called a few children over to her back table to meet with them about their writing.Similar to a number of primary-grade settings across the United States (Cutler & Graham, 2008), brief conversations-or conferences (Calkins, Hartman, & White, 2005) as they are often referred to-in which teachers meet one-on- one with students to share, discuss, revise, edit, or evaluate a piece of student writing or an idea for writing are an important and widely used pedagogical tool in Ms. Malone's classroom. Here, such conferences provide a space for participants to recognize and articulate individual strengths and goals, as well as to try out new writing strategies in order to move toward greater independence as writers. Moreover, they function as a type of formative assessment that aids the teacher in her understanding of where students are in relation to the mini-lessons they have undergone and what steps are needed to nudge their writing to the next level.Despite possessing a wealth of knowledge on writing pedagogy, an exemplar writing practice, and over a decade of experience conferring with primary-grade writers, Ms. Malone still found writing conferences to be "the most challenging part of her instruction. " While she agreed that spending time in individual conversations tailored to students' unique writing needs was an instructional opportunity full of promise, she often wondered if her engagement with her students "in the moment" was as productive to their growth as writers as it could be. In other words, the principle concern for Ms. Malone and others like her is, What is the impact of talk on learning? In Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning, Johnston (2004) recognized that it was through talk that children learned how to become strategic thinkers and literacy learners, and that what teachers said and how they said it shaped the opportunities for student learning that were possible during instruction. Even so, when making determinations about how to teach writing in their classrooms, the ways in which teachers deliver content, or the talk itself, tend to receive less attention (Alexander, 2006; Cazden, 2001; Christie, 2002; Johnston, 2004). According to Alexander (2006), for classroom talk to be productive, educators "must know where the talk is going, and do what is required to lead it there" (p. 49). In other words, successfully scaffolding children's thinking during a writing conference from present to desired understanding requires that teachers purposefully structure their talk in relation to those overarching goals they and their students are trying to achieve.In this article, after a brief introduction to relevant research/theory and an orientation to the larger context in which observed conferences occurred, I share four writing conference interactions between veteran writing teacher Maggie Malone and several of her first-grade students. Each illustrative case showcases how teacher talk, and especially teacher talk in regard to overall conference purpose, greatly shaped the nature of work she and her students accomplished within each conference interaction. It is important to note, however, that in offering these examples and equating them to four possible writing conference types that might be drawn on by teachers toward particular purposes, I do not wish to imply that these are the only legitimate ways in which to confer with young writers. …