Into the Driver's Seat

Today's guest blog post by Cathy Mere will help you jump on the electronic record-keeping bandwagon. Learn how to use Evernote to keep conferring notes on all of your students.

"We learn so much sitting beside writers as they work in our workshops each day.  Two years ago I gave up my spiral notebook I used to keep records of writing conference conversations for a digital system.  Saying goodbye to my spiral notebook with tabbed sections for each student was easier than I anticipated.  The time was right.  More and more often I found myself wanting to do more than record handwritten snippets of evidence, thought, and conversation.  More and more I found myself wanting to take pictures of student work or record student voices.  More and more I found myself wanting to link to digital pieces students were creating.  More and more I seemed to have a device in my hand instead of a pen.  After learning about Evernote I decided to see if I could use it as a tool to record notes from across the day.  I found myself enjoying the seamlessness of Evernote. It seemed Evernote was a tool to allow me to capture the learning journeys of the young writers in my classroom.

"To begin I created a notebook for each student and then placed them in a class stack.  Each time I confer with a writer during writing workshop I use Evernote.  Before I begin our conversation I glance through the last few notes, watch the work the writer is doing, and wait for an appropriate moment to chat.  For me, it has worked to create a new note inside the student’s notebook each time I have a conference with a writer.  My conferences are often structured like this:"