One reason I start by complimenting is that it sets the tone for the rest of the year by showing students I am a teacher who notices strengths.
Conferring With Readers by Jennifer Serravallo
Chapter 5 Reinforcing Student Strengths: Compliment Conferences
This definitely brought me back to Taberski "starting with what the child is doing well" (pg. 126). Starting off by complimenting a student, to me, always felt natural. Like you were supposed to start off like that. Learning about compliment conferences however, is not something I had even thought about. I love that you arent teaching a new strategy in these conferences, you are just restating and reinforcing the strategy you might have seen a student using. I also thought this would be great to do with our small teachers as well. When you first begin reading with a small teacher you automatically see what strategies they are using before you even teach them a strategy. This would be a great place to compliment them and reinforce their strategy so that they feel confident about what they are doing when they read. I also thought that the table compliments were also interesting. Where you call out one student on a strategy that student was using, and explain to other students at the table what that strategy is and how to use it and for them to all try it. Calling out one specific student, would that not make the others feel bad for not using that strategy? Or would it just give them the opportunity to try out a new strategy?
- Quote on pg. 49 -