Conferring with Readers: Supporting Each Student's Growth and Independence

A great reading conference only takes five minutes, but its impact can last a lifetime. That's because conferences are the critical, one-to-one teaching that forms the backbone of reading instruction. Conferring with Readers shows you how to confer well and demonstrates why a few moments with students every week can put them on the path to becoming better, more independent readers.

• research a student's use of skills through questions and observations
• compliment to support and build upon successes
• follow up on prior instruction for accountability and depth of understanding
• explain a reading strategy by providing an explicit purpose and context
• model the strategy to make the invisible brainwork of reading more visible
• guide a readerinpracticing the strategy
• link the strategy to independent reading.

• matching students to just-right books
• reinforcing students' strengths
• supporting students during whole-class studies
• helping students move from one reading level to the next
• holding students accountable for previous learning
• deepening students' conversations about books in order to deepen their thinking.

Jennifer Serravallo is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning educator, literacy consultant, frequent speaker at state and national conferences, and former member of the Parents Magazine editorial board. In 2023, she launched her podcast To the Classroom: Conversations with Researchers and Educators. Jen is best known for creating books and resources rooted in research that help make responsive, strategic, differentiated literacy instruction possible for all teachers.
Her newest books are THE READING STRATEGIES BOOK 2.0 (2023), TEACHING WRITING IN SMALL GROUPS (March 2021), A TEACHER'S GUIDE TO READING CONFERENCES (2019), and UNDERSTANDING TEXTS AND READERS (2018). Her books and resources are used around the world: THE WRITING STRATEGIES BOOK (2017) and THE READING STRATEGIES BOOK (1st edition) (2015) have have been translated into French, Chinese, and Spanish.
Her comprehension assessment and teaching resources, COMPLETE COMPREHENSION: FICTION and COMPLETE COMPREHENSION: NONFICTION, help teachers make sense of comprehension, especially in whole chapter books and book-length nonfiction texts. They were released in Spring 2019 and are available through Heinemann (Learn more: hein.pub/cc).
Jen holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA from Teachers College, where she has also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.
Follow Jen on Twitter (@jserravallo) and Instagram (@jenniferserravallo), learn more from her website/blog: and join the Literacy Strategies Facebook Community.