You Started
- Follow your instincts. Find tools you love and are excited to carry around and spend lots of time with.
- There are as many preferences for conferring tools as there are conferring teachers. Christina writes in pencil. Kari loves a gel pen tied to her clipboard with a long piece of colorful string. You and your teaching colleagues may have different tool preferences, and that’s ok. It’s important you find what works for you.
- Functional tools are critical. So figure out what really works for you on the go. If you find your tools aren’t working for you, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit until you find a better fit.
- Find a special spot to keep your conferring materials. Label it. Once school starts you’ll want to let all your students know about the importance of these tools and how you use them to support readers.
Treat Yourself to A Shopping Trip
Kari thinks getting organized to confer is a legitimate reason to go shopping for some supplies. Christina sees it as opportunity to go scavenging through the school looking for castoffs or district supplied materials. Either way, our short list of essential tools for getting started includes:
- Clipboard or binder – This provides a hard writing surface and means to keep notes together. Some of you might opt to use a digital tool, instead.
- Writing utensils – We like to keep a few different options at hand on the go.
- Sticky notes – A a variety of shapes and sizes can be used to jot notes to yourself and leave behind as reminders, visuals, or annotation tools for your students.
- Paper – We’ll offer a few different tools for note taking that can be downloaded in our next post, Challenge #10: Select a tool for taking notes while you confer.
Questions for Reflection
- What’s your favorite tool to write with? How can you make sure this tool is always at your fingertips while you confer?
- What other conferring materials have you tried in the past? What worked for you? What might you experiment with to help yourself stay more organized?
- What have your colleagues tried? What has worked and not worked for them?
- Where might you keep your conferring tools, so they’re always ready to grab and go when independent reading time begins?
We’d love to hear what’s on your list to buy or find to get yourself organized for conferring? Come on over to on our Facebook group and tell us about your ideas! We want to see what you’ll be carrying with you as you set out to confer this year.
Don’t miss a single post in this series! Click on the FOLLOW button (on the side bar or below) to have every new challenge delivered right to your inbox.