Using Evernote to Document Conferences With Individual Students

6th Grade ELA

Melissa Onstad

Problem Identified:

As an ELA teacher, I struggled to keep track of my conferring notes from one-on-one instruction with students, and my cumbersome binder system made it difficult for me to access previous notes each time I approached a student.

Hypothesis:

My hypothesis for this inquiry cycle was that if I used Evernote on an iPad to keep conferring notes, my data tracking would be stronger, resulting in more targeted conferences with students. I would measure this by whether I was keeping notes consistently, referring to the notes, and seeing more focus in the conferring work I did with each student.

Data Collection:

With the binder system, I typically completed 4 documented individual conferences per day, and seldom if ever completed conferences during intensive sessions, when different classes are blended. With Evernote, I typically complete 8 or more documented conferences per day, and I nearly always document conferences during intensive sessions.

Actionable Steps:

If you’d like to experiment with digital record-keeping of conferences, I recommend Evernote for its ability to integrate handwritten notes, typed notes, photographs and voice recordings. I made a notebook for each class and a file for each student. Then whenever I spoke with a student I would pull up his or her file and add on to my previous notes.

Overall Findings/Impact:

Overall, I found the iPad much easier to carry and use than a binder/clipboard combination, which led to an increase in the number of conferences I documented. Additionally, I was able to experiment with voice recordings to measure student fluency or to capture a conference demonstrated by a visiting staff developer. With more frequent conferring and documentation and the easy ability to look back over previous notes, I could more clearly identify individual student needs. For example, I quickly noticed a student who was hopping from book to book without finishing, and based on that data I put him on a personalized reading log.

Perhaps the best perk has been the ability to search by student. This came in handy when students were in mixed groups in intensive classes -- previously I would have had to carry three giant binders to have my conferring notes available during intensives! With conference notes easily accessible, I take better advantage of the small-group format of intensives to personalize instruction.

On the left, you can see some recent conferences and the search bar at the top. On the right, my entries show a student jumping from book to book each time I confer with him until finally, on 12/14, I put him on a personal reading log to track his completion of books.

In the image above, you can see how I experimented with photographing the student’s work as part of my record of our work. This student’s writing contained a lot of run-on sentences, and we were working on sentence structure.

In the first entry above, a visiting staff developer was conferring with a students and I was taking notes on the strategies he demonstrated. The audio recordings embedded above capture their conference so that I can listen to it again to study his techniques.