{"id":94,"date":"2019-11-04T22:29:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T22:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/?p=94"},"modified":"2019-11-19T23:52:23","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T23:52:23","slug":"taking-a-risk-in-unit-conferencing-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/2019\/11\/04\/taking-a-risk-in-unit-conferencing-1-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a Risk on Unit Conferencing (1\/2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Do you ever just need a breath? As teachers, we can all appreciate the craziness that is our lives, as we often fluctuate between moments of (relative) bliss and periods characterized by piles of marking and supplemental duties. During those more stressful times, a libation – or four – may accompany that breath. For me, one of those piles mounted two weeks ago, as marking, on top of 70-plus parent-teacher interviews, occupied my Friday and Saturday. As such, you can also appreciate that when it came time to blog, I choose to breathe instead.<\/span><\/p>\n

With that in mind, parent-teacher interviews are done and unit conferences in my classroom are commenced! For those not familiar with the term \u2018unit conference\u2019, I\u2019ll give a quick rundown. This is essentially a one-on-one conversation that takes place at the end of a unit between a teacher and a learner wherein the student discusses the learning that has taken place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, this concept was completely foreign to me, and it wasn\u2019t until after I had a conversation with an innovate colleague and fellow Cohorter, Matt Murray, that I began considering the implementation of this practice into my teaching. Matt spoke about how he was having students reflect on their mastery of curriculum standards in his math class. Through these conferences, he said, students would evaluate their perceived mastery of specific skills and would offer an explanation for their self-rating.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the onset of having this conversation, I knew that I wanted to try something similar in my classroom, as it seemed like an excellent way to get kids to be reflective and, quite frankly, to shift their mindset from marks to skills. Yet I wasn\u2019t sure exactly what this process would entail in an English classroom, as the math model in which Matt shared with me would not seamlessly adapt in an English setting. Further, for anyone who is not familiar with the Ontario Curriculum for English, the standards are overly broad at best and extremely vague at worst.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to Matt\u2019s model, however, I was able to craft a specific set of criteria that would be applicable for my English learners. Since this will be my first \u2018go\u2019 at unit conferencing, I expect there to be some snags along that way and room to refine my process over time. With that in mind, I\u2019m sure that my set of criteria is likely to change and that both the student preparations and conversations themselves will become much more sound.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m thankful to work with such inspiring and thoughtful colleagues and to work in an environment where we are free to take risks. Is implementing something new into your teaching difficult? Yep. Does going outside your comfort zone make you vulnerable? You bet. Are those not the very risks we ask our students to take daily? Bingo. What\u2019s next, then? Try something difficult, get outside my comfort zone, take a risk, and, oh ya, don\u2019t forget to breathe. Let the conferencing begin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Follow @Bjeblack and let me know if you’ve ever thought about or tried unit conferencing in your classroom!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you ever just need a breath? As teachers, we can all appreciate the craziness that is our lives, as we often fluctuate between moments of (relative) bliss and periods characterized by piles of marking and supplemental duties. During those more stressful times, a libation – or four – may accompany that breath. For me, … Continue reading “Taking a Risk on Unit Conferencing (1\/2)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":305,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan","category-classroom-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brandonblack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}