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Co-Confer with
Select Students

Protocol 2

This protool guides teachers to collaboratively confer with select
students in order to better support the students’ participation in the
classroom in equity-oriented ways.

Click here for a copy of this Protocol 2

Click on the images below to see the 2024 draft of this protocol.

This protocol will be finalized in fall 2025.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Co-confer, huddle & make decision together.

As planned, meet up to co-confer with your focal students during student work time. Then huddle together and decide what to do next based on what you’ve noticed about students’ thinking.

Step 1
Confer with focal students together
Possible prompts:
  • Tell us about what you’re thinking.
  • How did you get this?
  • Why/how does that work?
  • What feels hard or confusing?
  • What questions do you have about this problem?
  • NOTE: Try to avoid coaching or correcting the student
Step 2
Huddle during the lesson to share what you’ve noticed
Step 3
Make a decision together
Possible decisions/outcomes:
  • Share the thinks of a focal student with the class.
  • Facilitate a discussion about a common idea/partial understanding we noticed.
  • Continue circulating and conferring to learn more about students’ ideas.

Prepare to co-learn

STEP 1: Choose 2-3 students you and your co-learner would like more about during this lesson.
Question to consider:
  • • Why are we interested in learning more about these focal students?
  • • What do we know about these students already?
  • • What mathematical strengths have we noticed about these students?
  • • What questions do we have about these students’ math experiences, understanding and strenghts?
STEP 2: Make a plan for how and when you and your co-learner will confer together with the students you identified.

Plan to CO-CONFER WITH STUDENTS

  • • When will we confer with students during the lesson?
  • • Who will lead the conferences with each focal student?
  • • Who will take notes and observe?
  • (NOTE: You might decide to alternate roles for each conference).

Plan for your TEACHER HUDDLE(S)

  • • When during the lesson will we huddle and discuss what we’re noticing in the conferences?
  • • What kinds of decision(s) could we make during these huddles that might disrupt inequities?
STEP 3: Decide how you’ll share this plan with your class. For example, “Today [Teacher Name] and I will be working together to learn more about how students think about math. During work time today we might stop by your desks to ask questions about your awesome ideas. Thanks for helping us learn to be better teachers!

Debrief and make new plans.

• What did we learn about focal students?
  • • What strengths did we notice about the students’ procedural fluency, conceptual understandings, problem solving/reasoning and/or participation?
  • • What else do we want to learn about our focal students? How can we gather this information?
• What did notice about the work of conferring with students?
  • • What teacher moves did we make/notice that seemed productive? Why?
  • • What moments felt tricky or challenging? Why?
• What’s nest... new ideas/questions?
  • • What new ideas or questions do we have about equity-oriented instruction?
  • • What do we want to try next? What other learning/resources do we need to support our work?

Please email kulow@pdx.edu for more information about our project.

Please explore our site to learn about our protocols and think about how you might use them in your own work as a teacher candidate, mentor teacher, or teacher educator!

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2010634. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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