1st Edition

To Know and Nurture a Reader Conferring with Confidence and Joy

By Kari Yates, Christina Nosek Copyright 2018

    Conferring with students about reading allows for clearer access to one-on-one, in-the-moment teaching and learning, yet it can feel intimidating or overwhelming. Kari Yates and Christina Nosek want to help. Here they have provided practical, reflective, student-centered teaching moves that you can use to develop an intentional, joy-filled conferring practice.To Know and Nurture a Reader: Conferring with Confidence and Joy is a get-going guide to conferring. The book includes step-by-step guidance that is also considerate of time and other classroom challenges, as well as:

    Numerous tools such as guiding questions, reproducible planning and note-taking documents;

    Classroom vignettes that pull you close to a reader and teacher in a conference setting;

    Video clips of classroom conferences to show what conferring looks like in action.

    The book breaks conferring into manageable chunks with specific goals for knowing and nurturing young readers, then puts all the pieces together with various classroom scenarios and examples. The tools, examples, and ideas in this book make conferring something every teacher can do right away and master with continued effort and practice.

    Introduction Conferring with Courage and Commitment; Part 1: Interactive Moves; 1: Wonder: Bringing Curiosity and an open mind to Every Conference; 2: Affirm: Celebrating Effort, Strategy, and Emerging Work; 3: Extend: Nudging Readers Forward; 4: Remind: Ensuring Transfer Beyond this Conference; Part 2: Intentional Directions; 5: Confer to Support Book Choice; 6: Confer to Develop Healthy Habits; 7: Confer to Strengthen Strategic Process; 8: Confer to Support Authentic Response; Part 3: Organizational Moves; 9: Gather Materials: Getting ready for Teaching and Learning on the go; 10: Make a Plan: Creating time to Confer with all Students; 11: Take Note: Holding on to thinking to help pave the path ahead; Putting it all together

    Biography

    Kari Yates is an author, speaker, consultant, and staff developer with a passion for helping busy literacy educators thrive. Her experiences include classroom teacher, special education, Reading Recovery teacher, elementary school principal, and district literacy coordinator. Kari is also the author of Simple Starts: Making the Move to a Reader-Centered Classroom (Heinemann, 2015). Christina Nosek has been making a difference in elementary education for nearly 20 years. During that time, she’s experienced the classroom from many sides including classroom teacher, literacy coach, staff developer, reading specialist, and special education aide. She is currently teaching fifth grade in the San Francisco Bay Area while also working on writing projects and consulting.