Transforming Reading Instruction Through Five-Minute Conferences
In a recent podcast featuring literacy expert Sharon Callen, educators were introduced to a powerful approach to reading instruction that centres on brief, targeted conferences with students. These five-minute interactions offer teachers a window into students' reading processes while providing immediate, actionable feedback that propels learning forward. Far from being just another assessment tool, these conferences represent a shift in how teachers can understand and respond to their students' reading development in real time.
The Power of the Five-Minute Conference
Sharon Callen's approach to reading conferences is both elegant and effective. Rather than lengthy assessments that might overwhelm both teacher and student, she advocates for focused, five-minute interactions that yield immediate benefits. During these brief windows, teachers listen to students read for approximately one minute—just enough to observe patterns without collecting too many concerns.
This approach addresses a common challenge in education: how to meaningfully assess and respond to student needs within the constraints of classroom time. By limiting the observation period to about a minute, teachers can identify a specific area where intervention would be most beneficial, avoiding the "chasm of despair" where both teacher and student might feel overwhelmed by too many issues to address at once.
What makes this method particularly powerful is its focus on immediate application. Rather than collecting notes to address at some future point, Sharon demonstrates how teachers can provide a targeted strategy that students can practise right away during the conference itself, creating an instant learning opportunity.
"I want to be able to do something with that for the child right there and then," Sharon explains. "I don't want to store my notes away and think, what will I do with that down the track or what will I do with that for a small group. I want to actually make that moment with them an on-the-spot learning opportunity."
The Listening to Reading Protocol: A Framework for Observation
At the heart of Sharon's conferring approach is the "Listening to Reading, Watching While Writing Protocol" developed by Nell Duke and colleagues, which aligns with the Active View of Reading model. This protocol isn't merely a checklist but a comprehensive framework that helps teachers know what to look for during these brief reading samples.
The protocol is organised into key sections that reflect the components of skilled reading, including:
- Word recognition skills
- Comprehension processes
- "Bridging processes" such as print concepts, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, and flexible strategy use
By using this protocol over time (Sharon suggests using the same sheet for a semester), teachers can systematically build a picture of each student's reading development, noting patterns and progress in a way that standardised tests simply cannot capture.
The tool serves as both a guide for observation and a record of growth. Teachers in Sharon's example school were exploring various ways to incorporate the protocol into their record-keeping systems, with some considering adding protocol pages directly into students' reading calendars to create a cohesive documentation system.
The Conference Structure: Listen, Observe, Teach, Practise
Sharon outlines a clear structure for these five-minute conferences:
- Listen and Observe (approximately 1 minute): Have the student read a short section of text while you note specific strategies they're using or struggling with, guided by the protocol.
- Identify a Focus: Based on your observation, determine one specific strategy that would benefit the student most immediately.
- Teach the Strategy: Clearly name and explain the strategy in accessible language.
- Guide Practice: Have the student immediately practise the strategy with the same text, experiencing its impact firsthand.
- Set a Goal: Help the student articulate how the strategy will help them and set a specific goal (in their words) for continued practice.
- Record: Document both your observations and the student's goal, ensuring the goal is visible for ongoing reference.
The entire process takes just five minutes, making it feasible to conference with several students during each independent reading session, potentially reaching every student at least once a month.
Case Studies: Conferring in Action
The podcast brings the conferring process to life through several detailed examples spanning grades 3-6 from Sharon's recent consulting work with teachers and students in a Victorian school:
The Chapter Book Novice
A Year 3 boy was struggling with his first chapter book, immediately telling Sharon, "I find it difficult to remember what I'm reading." After listening to him read three paragraphs, Sharon noticed he kept his eyes focused on the text (good decoding) but couldn't recall what he'd just read from the longer paragraph.
Sharon introduced a simple but powerful strategy: "Keep your mind in the book." She explained that while his eyes were following the text well, his mind needed to stay engaged with the meaning. When the student reread the paragraph with this focus, the transformation was immediate: "Oh my goodness, it's really in my mind," he exclaimed.
The student then extended this strategy himself, asking for post-it notes to jot down brief summaries at the end of each page, creating a support system for remembering content across chapters. This self-generated extension demonstrated how quickly students can take ownership of strategies when they experience their effectiveness firsthand.
The Word Decoder
Another Year 3 student demonstrated good decoding skills for complex words but frequently misread simpler words without self-correcting, despite clearly knowing something was wrong. Sharon observed that he would hesitate after misreading a word but then continue without attempting to fix it.
When she asked about this pattern, he admitted, "I don't know what else to do." Sharon introduced a simple prompt—"Try a different sound"—without even specifying which letter in the word needed different pronunciation. Immediately, the student was able to correct "kindy" (which he was pronouncing with a "fine" sound) to the correct short name for "kindergarten" and "manage" (which he had read as "manig").
This simple strategy instantly transformed his reading experience, allowing him to access meaning that had been obscured by misreading. As Sharon noted, "We just changed that text from a text that was actually difficult into well within range."
The Novel Navigator
A Year 5 student who had previously read only graphic novels was attempting her first traditional novel. After two days, she wanted to abandon it because "the author jumps all over the place." Through conferring, Sharon discovered that the student didn't understand text organisation in novels versus graphic novels.
The student was reading without pausing for punctuation, paragraph breaks, or dialogue changes. She wasn't recognising how white space and formatting signal transitions in traditional text. Sharon explained how novels organise information through paragraphs, punctuation, and formatting rather than through the visual panels and speech bubbles of graphic novels.
This insight was transformative—the student realised she could navigate the novel's structure once she understood its organisational features. What had seemed like a chaotic text suddenly made sense, and she decided to continue with the book rather than abandon it.
An important connection emerged when the teacher later noted that this same student never used paragraphs in her own writing—demonstrating the powerful reading-writing connection that the protocol is designed to address.
The Fluency Builders
Two Year 4 students reading in choppy two-or-three-word phrases needed help with punctuation and intonation. They weren't using punctuation to guide their phrasing, resulting in monotone reading that hindered comprehension.
By modelling proper phrasing with attention to punctuation and then having students practise immediately, Sharon helped them hear and feel the difference in their reading. One student even refined the language, preferring to call it "emphasis" rather than "stress," demonstrating ownership of the concept.
Setting Goals and Building Self-Regulation
A crucial element of effective conferring is goal-setting. After identifying a strategy and practising it together, Sharon helps students articulate a specific goal in their own words, which they record on their reading calendars. This visible reminder helps students self-monitor their strategy-use during independent reading.
In the school where Sharon was working, every student maintained a reading calendar with a dedicated space for recording reading goals. By making these goals visible and revisiting them regularly, teachers helped students internalise strategies and develop self-regulation.
"A strategy goal is of no import if it's not being used," Sharon emphasises. The calendar system allowed students to check off when they used their strategy and reflect on their progress, creating accountability and a concrete record of growth.
The Reading-Writing Connection
The protocol Sharon references is actually called the "Listening to Reading, Watching While Writing Protocol," highlighting the important connection between reading and writing development. This connection was powerfully illustrated in the case of the Year 5 student who struggled with novel organisation and never used paragraphs in her writing.
When the teacher made this connection, it revealed how addressing a reading strategy could simultaneously address a writing challenge. Understanding paragraph structure in reading naturally transfers to paragraph use in writing, creating a reciprocal relationship between these literacy skills.
From Individual Conferences to Whole-Class Instruction
While conferences target individual needs, they also inform whole-class instruction. When teachers notice patterns across multiple conferences, they can develop targeted mini-lessons that benefit everyone.
As one teacher in the podcast noted after observing two conferences: "I can see a class goal already because I've actually noticed this across students." The individual insights gained through conferring can thus scale up to more efficient whole-class instruction when appropriate.
Sharon emphasises that the conferring process mirrors the structure of effective mini-lessons: observation, modelling, guided practice, reflection, and goal-setting. The conference is essentially a micro version of the mini-lesson, personalised for one student's specific needs.
Building Strategic, Self-Regulating Readers
Perhaps most powerfully, this conferring approach teaches students a process for identifying challenges and applying strategies independently. Students aren't just learning specific reading skills; they're learning how to problem-solve as readers.
Sharon notes how quickly students reveal their reading challenges—even to someone they've just met—when given the space to discuss their reading process. This openness creates opportunities for teaching that wouldn't exist otherwise.
The approach also honours student agency. In many examples, students expanded on the strategies Sharon introduced, creating their own applications and extensions. This ownership is crucial for developing self-regulated learners who can monitor their comprehension and adjust strategies as needed.
Documentation and Long-Term Growth
The protocol serves as a documentation system that builds over time, creating a comprehensive picture of each student as a reader. By recording observations and goals on a single sheet across a semester, teachers can track patterns, progress, and needs in a way that informs both immediate instruction and longer-term planning.
This documentation becomes particularly valuable at reporting time, offering evidence of growth that goes far beyond standardised test scores. It captures the nuanced development of reading strategies across multiple domains, providing a more complete picture of each student's journey as a reader.
Practical Implementation
The podcast addresses practical concerns about implementing conferences in busy classrooms. Sharon emphasises that conferences take place during independent reading time when other students are engaged in their own reading. By keeping conferences to five minutes, teachers can conference with several students during each reading session.
The school in the example was exploring various ways to organise and store the protocol sheets, with some teachers considering incorporating them directly into reading calendars to create a cohesive documentation system that travelled with students.
Sharon also acknowledges that teachers don't need to master every aspect of the protocol at once. Some teachers might begin by focusing just on the fluency section, gradually expanding their focus as they become more comfortable with the process.
Conclusion: The Ripple Effect of Five Minutes
As Sharon reflects, "I can do something bite-sized that makes a significant difference." These five-minute interactions, multiplied across a classroom over time, create readers who actively monitor their understanding and possess an expanding toolkit of strategies to tackle increasingly complex texts.
The conferring approach transforms assessment from a separate activity that interrupts instruction into an integrated process that drives learning forward. It shifts the focus from evaluating students to empowering them, from collecting data to responding to needs, and from identifying deficits to building strategies.
Together with the curriculum, conferences also inform what teachers teach in their strategy mini lessons, picking up on what most students need support with. The strategy mini lesson uses the same process used in the 5-minute conference, with the teacher explicitly modelling a strategy to the whole class and giving them time to have a mini tryout (with teacher as guide) before being going off to their independent practice time.
By investing in regular conferring, teachers help students develop not just as readers of today's text, but as strategic, self-regulating readers for life. They empower their own teaching to be much closer to what most students need. The five minutes spent in a reading conference may seem brief, but its impact on a student's reading journey and the teacher's teaching journey, can be profound and lasting.
Resources
The Listening to Reading Watching While Writing Protocol