The following excerpt is reprinted from Lessons From a Child: On the Teaching and Learning of Writing by Lucy McCormick Calkins. Copyright © 1983 by Lucy McCormick Calkins. Published by Heinemann, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc., Portsmouth, NH. (Pages 125 - 130.)

18. Teaching children to teach each other

"Not my children," teachers often say when they hear about Atkinson. "If I let my kids get together and talk about their writing, they'd write each other's pieces; either that or they'd tell each other their stories are perfect." Others feel even more strongly. "I tell my students there's no talking during writing time. Otherwise it's chaos."

Carolyn was skillful at responding to these comments because she'd heard them from many of the visitors who streamed through her classroom that year. "I felt the same way," she'd reassure them. "But then I realized I was expecting my kids to confer well without giving them any help. I don't expect them to learn math without guidance. Why should I expect conferencing to be a natural skill?"

Often during that year, Mrs. Currier used mini-lessons as a time to teach the skills of peer conferencing. She had begun this with my urging. With much trepidation, Mrs. Currier and Diane held a public conference in front of the classroom. First, Diane read her draft and her teacher responded to it, receiving the piece, asking questions, and helping Diane reconsider what she'd done. Then roles were switched, and Mrs. Currier read a story she'd written for the occasion and Diane listened and responded to it. After the demonstration, Mrs. Currier asked the class to replay the conferences, thinking about what worked and what didn't work. Soon these public conferences became commonplace. Mrs. Currier used them to illustrate ways the children could become good listeners, and to warn children against taking control away from the writer. Mostly, she used them to show the importance of asking good conference questions.

On one wintry morning, Mrs. Currier began the mini-lesson by asking children to list ten questions they wished others would ask them in conference. Then they shared the questions, discussed them, and eventually compiled a huge chart entitled "Good Conference Questions." These were the questions Susie hoped others would ask her:

1. How do like your story? How do you feel about it?
2. Does your title fit your story?
3. Do you have more than one story in your piece?
4. Can you add more feeling to it?
5. Is there more you could add?
6. Tell me what happened in detail.
7. Are there too many extra things in it that you don't really need?
8. Are you going to keep working on it?
9. Have you enjoyed writing it?

Share meetings, like mini-lessons, were a vehicle for helping children become good writing teachers. When children shared work-in-progress at these whole-class meetings, Mrs. Currier suggested that both the writer and the listener follow a format which they could also use in all peer conferences:

1. Writers would begin by explaining where they were in the writing process, and what help they needed. For example, a child might say, "I'm on my third draft and I want to know if you can picture it," or "I have six titles and I can't decide which is best."
2. Usually, but not always, the writer then would read the piece -- or the pertinent section of the piece -- out loud.
3. The writer would call on listeners. Usually listeners would begin by retelling what they'd heard, "I learned that..." they'd say, or "Your piece began..." Sometimes they'd begin by responding to or appreciating the content of the piece.
4. Questions or suggestions would then be offered, not about everything, but about the concerns raised by the writer. Sometimes other things would come up as well, but not always.

Mrs. Currier, like Mrs. Howard, used share meetings as a time when she could teach children to follow a line of questioning. This is a crucial skill in conferencing and a difficult one. Oftentimes, whether children were in a group or in an individual peer conference, they were apt to hop from one topic to another, as they do in this very typical interaction:

Listener #1:	Where are you in this story?
Writer:	I was sitting on the boat.
Listener #2:	What happens next in the story? How does it end?

At this point in the discussion, Mrs. Currier intervened, reminding children to follow through on one question before moving onto the next. The discussion then backtracked and continued like this:

Listener #1:	Where were you in this story?
Writer:	I was sitting on the boat.
Listener #2:	Exactly where were you?
Writer:	Well, I sat up in the bow of the boat with my legs hanging over the edge. I was looking out to sea.
Listener #1:	Now I can picture it! Do you think you should add that in, because it was confusing to not know where you were in the story.
Writer:	I'll look at it and see if it goes in. Any other questions or suggestions?

As the children learned to follow through on questions, the share meetings became more helpful for them as writers. Instead of a barrage of connected ideas and questions, writers and listeners worked together to develop a train of thought and to explore the ramifications of their ideas. In February, Jay read a draft aloud to his classmates. It was a detailed story of one of his earlier escapades. Jay had crept past a lady and into a chicken coop, stolen eggs from behind the curtains and then hidden the eggs.

The children clapped when Jay finished his story. It was rare for them to clap during their share meetings, and so Jay seemed delighted with their celebration of his story. Jay blushed and almost forgot to call on classmates for their questions and comments.

Craig:	Jay, why did you hide the eggs? I don't get that part.
Jay:	So no one would find them. I shouldn't have stolen them.
Susie:	Who is the lady?
Jay:	Just a lady.
Diane:	Is she important in the story? Do we need to know...
Craig:	(interrupting) You could tell about her hair and her eyes and her clothes and all.
Jay:	But it isn't important. That's not part of the story. (He seemed frustrated.)
Mrs. Currier:	Jay, you've mentioned someone in the story, this lady, and so we need to know just a little. Maybe a word or two would be enough.
Jay:	Well, I don't know what to say. I can't remember. She was just sitting there and they were her chickens.
Mrs. Currier:	Oh, I see. So you put her into the story because they were her chickens!
Jay:	Oh, I could tell that...
Susie:	Another thing, Jay. I didn't understand about the curtains. Why were the eggs behind the curtains? What curtains?
Jay:	They were at the nests so the chickens could lay their eggs in peace.
Susie:	Oh! Well, I really like your story, Jay, because, except for that one part, I could picture all of it and how it felt. I never thought you would have taken eggs when you were little!

The children became more skillful at helping each other as they learned more about the qualities of good writing. Mostly they learned this through writing and rewriting, but to some degree, the mini-lessons on specific points also contributed. Usually Mrs. Currier used the share meetings as a time to reinforce the concepts raised in mini-lessons. For example, on a morning in late February Mrs. Currier devoted the mini-lesson to the concept of "show -- not tell." When Wendy came to her during the workshop for more help with the concept, Mrs. Currier suggested Wendy save her questions until the share meeting. When all the children had gathered on the rug, Wendy explained her predicament. "I'm trying to show that I was riding along on a snowmobile without saying, 'I rode on a snowmobile.' This is what I have so far:"

My father and I were riding in the snowmobile. We went over the ice and through some woods and up to the Kingston fire tower but all I could see when I look around was trees and woods. We zoomed on and got onto ice that had no snow on top of it. My father tried to steer and all of a sudden... we were fishtailing!

Amy raised her hand. "You could say, ' the snow was spraying in my face or the trees raced by' -- give them a feeling of it being fast."

Susie added, "and instead of saying ' we were on a snowmobile,' Wendy, you could say, ' I climbed onto our big yellow snowmobile. My father climbed on beside me. He said 'hold on' and we zoomed off.'"

Similarly, on a day when Mrs. Currier had devoted the mini-lesson to the effective use of dialogue and to the problems of overusing it, she suggested that Tracey bring her draft to the share meeting. Tracey explained to her friends, "I can't seem to get all the chitchat out of my story," and then she read her draft to the class. This is the beginning of it:

Billie and I went on a snowbank. Billie Jean buried herself.

I said, "What in the world are you doing?"

"Burying myself." "Oh. Get out from under there you Stupid. You look just like a snowman."

"Well, if I do? Poo! Poo!"

"Oh shut up." My sister buried herself again. "Well if you buried yourself, I will too."

Wendy began with the question which was neither tactful nor related to the issue at hand. "Was there anything else you did outside that would make a more interesting story?" she asked.

Mrs. Currier quietly interrupted. "Wendy, do you remember the specific thing Tracey wanted us to help her with?"

Wendy looked down and began picking at her sneaker. Susie came to her rescue with a suggestion for Tracey. "In some places where you or Billie Jean are talking, could you make yourselves thinking instead of talking? Like, you could say 'In my mind I thought she looked like a snowman.'"

There were other questions and suggestions and more of them reinforced the morning's mini-lesson on dialogue. The children's questions during share meetings did something else as well. They provided models for good questions, and for questions which developed specific qualities of good writing. Although the class never gathered these questions into a chart, they easily could have compiled something like this:

Questions which help writers focus:

• What is the most important thing you are saying?
• Why did you choose this topic? What's important about it to you?
• Which is the most important part of your story? Why?
• Where do you get to your main idea?
• Is there anything that doesn't seem to fit into your story?
• Do you think you have two stories, or one?

Questions which help writers "show -- not tell:"

• Read me the places where you're pleased with your description. What makes these sections work better than others?
• Are there places you could describe more? I can't always picture it.
• Have you tried to underline the places where you tell us something like "he was ugly," and then rewrite those on another sheet of paper, showing instead of telling?
• If I'd been watching you, how what I have known that -- as you say in the paper -- you felt sad? What exactly would I have seen?

Questions which help writers expand their pieces:

• In your own words, tell me all about this. What else do you know about the topic?
• What questions do you think people will have for you? If you answer them now, you can get rid of some of the questions.
• Could you go through your story, reading me a line, then telling me more about it?
• Why don't you try reading your story over and putting a dot on the page wherever there is more to tell.

Questions which help a writer reconsider the sequence:

• Let's see; what did you tell first? Second? Third? (They make a list.) Is there any other way you could order this? Why did you decide to put it in this order?
• Have you tried cutting it up and putting it in a different order?
• Could you make this into a flashback?

Although both mini-lessons and share meetings were helpful, I suspect they weren't nearly as powerful as the example Mrs. Currier set in her own conferences with the children.

Return to Wood, "A Marriage Waiting to Happen: Computers and Process Writing"