Holding Student-Teacher Writing Meetings
In this section:
- Overview of student-teacher meetings
- Preparing students for meetings
- Strategies for successful meetings
- Pre-meeting questionnaire
The individual meetings you hold with your students, whether informally in “student hours” (a term that’s more welcoming than office hours) or in pre-scheduled meetings, will be time well spent: by talking directly and individually with students about their writing, you can have a profound influence on how they
- interpret your assignments and your comments on their work
- approach a draft or a revision
- understand your course learning goals and outcomes
- feel that they belong in your course/department/major
- develop and maintain motivation to write
- develop as writers and thinkers
Talking about ideas, drafts, and revisions is an essential part of writing, and one-one meetings provide ideal opportunities for that talk.
“First-year students and seniors whose writing assignments involved interactive processes and provided clear expectations were more likely to perceive greater progress in learning and development.”
Anderson et al., How Writing Contributes to Learning (2015)
Student-teacher meetings usually last between 10 and 30 minutes, especially with a large class, and can occur during the brainstorming, drafting, or revising phases of the writing process. Some instructors cancel classes during the days they hold student meetings so that they can fit them all in.
You will, of course, adjust your meeting strategies to suit the student you’re talking with, the purpose of the meeting, and the time of the semester; but here are some general suggestions that may help you and your students make the most of conferences.
How to prepare your students for meetings
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Think through your purposes for holding meetings. Some of many overlapping possibilities:
- clarifying your expectations for papers
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helping students focus a topic or argument
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helping students generate ideas or arguments or plans for papers
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motivating students to get started, persist, or work harder on their writing
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coaching students to be more precise or accurate or thorough in their representation of others’ ideas
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helping students make a thesis or argument more complex
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elaborating on your written comments
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checking students’ understanding (of written comments, of course material, of assignments . . .)
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Talk in class and tell students what to expect during the meetings.
- Introduce meetings through multiple means: post to your Canvas course page, share in class
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Spell out the logistics: where to meet you, how long the meetings will last, what to bring, what to prepare, how to reschedule.
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Explain the purpose of the meetings and make some suggestions for how students can get the most from them.
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Have students reflect on their writing/drafting during the class period before and submit their ideas to you ahead of time:
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“If you had to summarize the argument of your paper in 2-3 sentences, you would state…”
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“What is your biggest concern or anxiety about your paper?”
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“What is one part of your paper that you think works well?”
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Have students write out questions for the meeting in advance
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These questions should be specific: not “What did you think of this paper?” but “Do you think I stray from my main point in the long paragraph on page three?”; “What do you see as my main point?” or “Should this closing story be my opening hook?”
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Early in the semester, work with the class to generate a list of model questions, and then post these question to Canvas.
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If the purpose of the meeting is to review written comments you’ve made on previous papers and guide future progress, ask students to come prepared with specific questions about your comments on previous papers–and tell them they’ll be in charge of setting the agenda.
Spend a small amount of class time talking about meetings after they’re over–asking students what was helpful about the conferences, sharing some students’ effective ideas and strategies with the whole class, explaining what you’ve discovered many students need explained, reflecting on what you learned from the conferences, asking students for suggestions for improving the next round of conferences.
Use Technology to your Advantage
With teacher-student contact occurring virtually at times, you can use technology to your advantage in fostering student success in your meetings. Here are a few technologies you should consider using:
- A shared Google Doc where you and your student can look over their draft simultaneously. This is especially useful if you have already offered comments on their writing, and you can work through them together
- A mapping platform (like Padlet, or like Zoom’s whiteboard function) to give students a virtual space to brainstorm ideas with you
- Chatboxes (in Zoom, Google Docs, and more) where you can drop useful links to outside resources (for example, if they have questions about grammar or mechanical issues)
