In this conference, I am talking with Jack about why losing his lost tooth was important to him. At first, I thought he was just writing about losing a tooth from his mouth. But, in fact, he was writing about when he lost a tooth that had fallen out a while ago, that he had saved in a special tooth necklace.
Jack became very distracted early on as he reread something for me because he had left a letter out of word. I felt it better that he fix it then, so he could focus with me on why the event was important.
Jack really is an amazing 2nd grade writer. He loves poetry and has a strong sense of his writing identity. He loves to write and is always very conscientious about his work. He was anxious to get all the things we talked about into his own writing.
| TEACHER: | I want to focus our conversation right now on the why, why it was important. |
| STUDENT: | I really wanted to keep my tooth, but my tooth wasn't broken. |
| TEACHER: | That's okay. We make mistakes but that's why we reread, right? We find those little mistakes and we go back and that's OK. You were excited that your tooth had fallen out but at the same time you wanted to keep your tooth? Okay. What did you do? |
| STUDENT: | I was excited so I got it out in my necklace and for a while it stayed in there. When I went in my bedroom after breakfast, it fell out but I noticed it in the living room. So I thought it had fallen out in the living room. So we searched the living room and I think - oh, we searched the living room and then finally my mom came up with, maybe it's in my room. |
| TEACHER: | I'm getting a sense that the event that you're writing about isn't a time when the tooth actually fell out of your mouth. |
| STUDENT | No. |
| TEACHER: | But this was a tooth that had fallen out and that you had kept and it was in a special little tooth container and necklace type thing and for some reason you really - this tooth was really important to you. Okay, and you lost that tooth. Am I understanding correctly now? Okay. Because when I first read your title there I thought that it was just like when a tooth had fallen out of your mouth. Like what happened one day at recess last week. That's not what the situation is. Okay. I'm clear now. |
| STUDENT: | But it really had fallen out in the bedroom so we didn't find it until my mom came up with that. |
| TEACHER: | So thank goodness for mom. |
| STUDENT: | Yeah. |
| TEACHER: | Okay. So it sounds like you had a lot of anxious feeling and a lot of feelings of excitement. |
| STUDENT: | Yeah, that's one reason - why it was important. [inaudible]. |
| TEACHER: | It was such a big thing for you. Why did you want to hang onto that necklace? To that tooth and that necklace? |
| STUDENT: | Because I just lost it. |
| TEACHER: | Was it the first time you had lost a tooth? |
| STUDENT: | No, but - |
| TEACHER: | What made you want to hang onto that tooth so bad? |
| TEACHER: | This had been one of your little chompers that you use to chew up your food and you didn't want to let it go? Was that in there anywhere, why you wanted to hang onto that tooth? That's what I want you to do. I want you to think about the words that you could use to show that. |