Chapters 10, 11, and 12

Chapter 10 dealt with teaching the conference. It highlighted some teaching moves to do in a conference to make it as effective as possible:
-Transitions
-Naming the skill
-Saying why it's good
-Say back to me
-Record the teaching
I feel pretty comfortable now about finding strengths in student's writing but I am still curious how to pick one specific skill to focus on in a conference with a student when you can find a few different things the child needs to work on. What are the most important things a child needs to know first and foremost to develop most successfully as a writer? I again enjoyed the point of including why something is good to the student because as a child I never cared about anything I was taught unless I was given a full explanation of why the thing I was learning is important. Another thing I really liked and found interesting in this chapter was having a student say back to me what we just went over in the conference. From my experience working with students I have seen how students will often act like they understand what you are teaching them but then five minutes later don't remember. It is easy to feel like you just taught a student something very successfully when they assure they understand and can do the skill correctly as you are guiding them along but is very upsetting when that lesson does not stick. If you develop a routine of having students always say back to you the skill they were just taught they will soon be expecting it and pay full attention. It is just like the idea presented earlier in the book that if you tell students they are going to have to discuss with other students what is being taught in group lesson they are bound to pay attention more so they will know what they are talking about with their peers later. Recording the teaching is also a very smart idea so you don't lose track of what you worked on with each individual students and keep records of what they have learned and what you still need to cover.
Chapter 11 dealt more with group conferences and how to manage them. I have seen many group conferences before and I have seen them go well and I have seen them be a total disaster. In some cases the students all were well behaved, spoke only when asked, and got the work done. In other instances however, I have seen group conferences turn into a disaster. The students would be rolling around, talking to one another not paying attention, interrupting one another, and wasting time. This caused none of the work to get done. How do you get a group conference to go successfully? Is there a certain environment that helps the students become more focused? For example is having them sit at a table together better then having them sit on the floor in front of you as the teacher? I agree with the chapter that it is still very important to record the teaching point on each of their conference sheets because with a group conference you may not get everything done that you thought you would.
Assessing a students writing, as discussed in chapter 12, seems like something that I, as a teacher, will have to make sure I am doing fairly and have a proper rubric for all students to follow. When creating a writing assignment for students I want to be sure I have a fully developed rubric to use when grading the assignment before I even assign it. It is important to have specific requirements in each section of the rubric so each students' paper will be graded fairly. What does one do however, if the rubric created for an assignment ends up being too tough and the majority of the students papers fall into the "unacceptable" category? What if that continually happens and, as a teacher, I feel students should be able to do the things I am asking of them but their performance continually says otherwise? I have felt many times that grades I have received were unfair and often just saw numbers next to my strengths and weaknesses, never an explanation. As a teacher I want to be sure I don't just check the categories on my rubric but if a student is lacking in a skill be sure to make note of exactly what they are missing and try to help them improve on that skill for later.