CCP: Episode 31 // How to Use a Reader’s and Writer’s Notebook in the Upper Elementary Classroom
If you’ve ever Needed a simple, yet effective way to organize your students' reading & writing materials - then, it’s time to start using a reader’s & writer’s notebook!
Ever feel overwhelmed by papers on your desk? Have you looked inside your student’s desks only to see papers shoved here and there? Me too and I’m here to help.
This episode gives you practical tips on how to organize your reading and writing resources so that you and your students will have everything you need in one easy-to-access location.
Not only will using a reader’s and writer’s notebook help save your sanity when it comes to classroom organization, but it will help teach your students how to be organized and responsible - a great skill for the classroom AND life.
You’ll LEarn:
(Timestamps Shown)
How my love for organization plays out in the classroom (2:14)
What a reader’s and writer’s notebook is (4:12)
The sections and resources to keep inside a reader’s notebook (5:31)
The sections and resources to keep inside a writer’s notebook (11:20)
The most used section of your writers notebook (13:18)
The best place to store your student readers and writers notebooks (18:06)
How to not overwhelm your students when using the notebook system (21:09)
Several benefits of using a Readers and Writers Notebook (22:31)
links & resources mentioned in the episode:
Blog: Helping Students to Create Independent Reading Goals
Blog: Teaching Students to Choose “Just Right” Books During Independent Reading
Video tutorial: Creating a Student Reader’s Notebook
Video tutorial: Sneak Peek inside my students’ Writer’s Notebook
Video tutorial: What To Do During Writing Conferences
Episode 29: How to Launch Reader’s Workshop in Your Classroom
Episode 30: How to Launch Writer’s Workshop in the Upper Elementary Classroom
Resources: Reader’s Notebook and Writer’s Notebook (printable & digital)
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TRANSCRIPT
Ep. 31: Using a Reader's and Writer's Notebook transcript powered by Sonix—easily convert your audio to text with Sonix.
Ep. 31: Using a Reader's and Writer's Notebook was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.
Well, hello there, welcome to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast, I am Rachael, your host. Thank you so much for joining me today. At the time of this recording we are well into the back to school season and we are trying to do all the things to get ready to send our kids back to school, whatever that looks like for us. We are doing a hybrid model of some in-person learning as well as some at home learning like we did in the spring. We're getting used to the idea of doing that again with our kiddos, whether that's your own students or your own children at home. We're trying to balance out how it's all going to look as we begin our school year. Some of you may already even be back at school and hopefully are getting into the swing of things a little bit as you've navigated those first few weeks of school. Hopefully they are going well for you and you are starting to feel like you are getting in the groove a bit. At least this time around we have some idea of what the virtual teaching world looks like a little bit and we know more what to expect.
As we begin our talk today, I want to ask you a few questions. What is your current system for organizing your student reading and writing resources? Are you always going here for one resource and there for another? Do you find that your students reading responses or writing pieces end up shoved in the back of their desks or on the floor somewhere? If you've been around me for even just a little bit, you probably wouldn't be surprised when I say that I love all things organization, although you wouldn't really know it at the moment as my desk and office seem to be in shambles. But, that's what happens when you try to be a full time parent and run a full time business during a pandemic. My love for organization is not a unique quality for teachers. I know we love our organization bins and our folders, our flyer pens, and our labelers, all those things. On top of that, I am a systems girl. I'm always looking for ways that I can systematize everything in my life. I like processes, systems, and checklists to help me stay on top of it all. Does my life always run smoothly? Of course not! However, I know that my day will run smoother if I have an order and a structure to it and boy, now more than ever do I feel like I need order and structure to my days. Our students are the same way. They need structure and systems to. Each year when I was teaching, I was always tweaking my organization systems and looking for better ways to create better order in my classroom. For me, order equals peaceful and I think it's important that we teach our students to have organization skills as well.
One organizational tool that I really love to use with my students was my Reader's and Writer's Notebooks. Before using these notebooks, I was swimming in a sea of student reading logs, writing responses, reading responses, Post-it notes all over the place, and other reading and writing related activities. For my students, there was no general spot for these things to be kept and there certainly wasn't any organization on how I had my students keep them but once I implemented the notebook system, and I'm going to talk a whole lot about that notebook system today, I had one place to keep all of my students reading and writing materials. It was a sanity saver. The notebook system put my organizational loving heart at peace and it just might do the same for you. So today I'm going to walk you through what a Reader's and Writer's Notebook is, how you can set one up in your own classroom with your students, and some of the really powerful benefits of using this system with your students.
First, let's talk about 'What is a Reader's or Writer's Notebook'? A Reader's or Writer's Notebook is typically a binder. I liked using a one inch binder, that seemed to work well for me throughout the school year. This binder was divided into sections that would help keep students organized with all of their reading and writing materials, and it would be organized into categories. I've also recently explored how to make a digital reader's and writer's notebook work, especially now as many of us will be having some sort of virtual learning the school year. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later on in this episode. The binder was the students go to reading and writing resource that they would use almost every single day, if not every day in your reading and writing work block. It also served as an assessment tool for you to help inform your instruction. The notebook is a place for students to keep track of their reading and writing goals, make reading responses or do free writing, as well as keep track of conferences that you and your students have together so that you can keep all that information for reference later on. It's also a place where students can store references, handouts, or reading and writing tools that you give them throughout the year, that they can then use when they're working independently. Again, it's that one stop shop for all their reading and writing materials.
So let's take a moment and kind of go over what goes into each notebook. I am first going to talk about the Reader's Notebook and then I will talk about what goes in a Writer's Notebook. They're very similar in some aspects, but they also have some different components as well. My Reader's Notebook was broken up into four sections. The first section was a spot to keep track and record reading goals and progress. This is where students would record their monthly reading goals and track their progress. I have an entire blog post all about how to help your students create, maintain, and develop reading goals. I will link to that blog post in the show notes. These reading goals can include reading behavior goals, reading book selection goals, reading strategy, or skill goals. Just like in anything in our lives, it is so important to set goals for ourselves so that we know what we are working toward. And of course, with every good goal comes with a good plan. I teach this to my students so that we come up with reading goals that are tailored and specific toward our needs, and then we come up with a plan of action to help us reach those goals.
Let me give you an example, let's say you have a student who, when you send them off from the mini lesson to go get started on their reading center or independent reading or whatever it is that you're having them do that day, they take forever to do it. They start walking around the room, they have to go sharpen their pencil, they have to get their bags, and then they forget something at their desks so they have to go back to their desks. This is going to prohibit them from being successful in Reader's Workshop. Before you can even get to a goal that is going to help their actual reading abilities, we've got to get them to a point where they can just get started right away on their reading activities. The beginning goal for them might be getting started on my task right away and then we help them develop an action plan. So for this student, maybe they need to have a little checklist at their desk that they can go through right before they start their reading activity for the day. That checklist might say something like, grab my pencil, grab my reader's notebook, grab my reading bag, X, Y and Z, whatever it is that they need before getting started so that they don't have that excuse, that, oh, I forgot this or I've got to go grab my pencil or whatever it may be. We give them an action plan, a step by step process that they can follow to reach their reading goal. Maybe you have a student that is great at getting started, but then they have a hard time staying on task. They get distracted by other students so their reading behavior goal might be to stay on task and then you're going to give them some action plan steps that they can follow to reach that goal. Maybe you have a student who always chooses books that are either way too hard or way too easy for them. They might have a book selection goal that helps them choose a just right book. I have a another blog post all about choosing just right books and helping students to do that, I will also link to that in the show notes. You might have a reading behavior goal or a book selection goal, but you also will likely have four students throughout the year, different reading strategy and skill goals. Maybe one student needs to use the visualizing strategy to help them really imagine what their story is about or you have a student who never stops to ask themselves questions as they're reading so they would have that as their reading goal. Choosing reading goals for your students is something that you're going to do together with them, and it's something that's going to take some time to really develop that skill of actually choosing a goal coming up with a plan and then reflecting upon that goal later on after they've worked towards that goal. So that's something that you're going to be teaching them and working with them. That was the first section of my reader's notebook. It was a spot for them to keep track of their reading goals and their progress.
The second section was the reading record section. In this section, I had my students keep track of their daily reading so that, for me looked like a reading log, for you it might look like something else. I also had them keep their conference notes with me in this section, so every time I would have a reading conference with them, we would record what we talked about in the reading conference on their conference sheets, and then they would have that in this section to reference later on when we met for the next time.
The third section of my Reader's Notebook was the reading response section. In this section, students would create a variety of reading responses to their individual books. Within the sections, students would use different reading, response templates and props. This was also a place where they could put any activity sheets that I had them completing in their independent reading time.
The final section of the notebook was the Reading Resources section, this was an ongoing, curated collection of resources that I would give them to reference on their own. If I was teaching a specific skill or strategy during a mini lesson, I might have a handout to go with that skill or strategy that I wanted them to keep in their reading resources sections that they could refer to it when they were working on their own and reading on their own. There was a table of contents at the beginning of the section that I had students complete as I gave them a handout. So if I gave them a new handout, they would put the title of that handout on the table of contents, and then I would also have them number the page of the handout so that they could easily find it if they needed to. And of course, as the year went on, this section could get a little thick so periodically you can have them take out handouts that they may no longer need. You can maybe even do this once a quarter, have them recycle handouts that they no longer need, so that they have a fresh section for the next quarter. It's completely up to you how often or if at all, you want them to clean out the resource section of their notebook. I also wanted to let you know that I have a helpful video tutorial that I made where I walk through my actual Reader's Notebook. That kind of gives you an idea of what it looks like and what the pages that I'm referring to look like so that gives you some helpful tips for when you want to create your own. I will link to that video in the show notes.
Now, my Writer's Notebook again, had a lot of similar sections as The Reader's Notebook, but there are also some different components as well. The first section of my Writer's Notebook, just like my Reader's Notebook, was the writing goals section. And this, again, was where students recorded and came up with an action plan to help them reach their writing goals for writing goals might include writing presentation goals, writing behavior goals, writing structure and organization goals, writing convention goals and spelling and vocabulary goals. So, for example, a writing presentation goal might be for a student who has a hard time putting spaces between their words, their writing just looks unclear, it's really hard to read, so you might give them a writing presentation goal or you might give them a writing behavioral goal, like the reading behavioral goals. These are goals that help students to focus on how they are behaving and acting and how successful they are being during writer's workshop. Things like getting started with their writing right away, staying focused, keeping their materials organized, things like that. You might have writing structure or organization goals for your students if they need help with things like using paragraphs to separate major topics or events, or they need to vary the length of their sentences or help staying on topic, you would then help them come up with a writing structure or organization goal. And then of course, they are writing convention goals where students need to learn to use commas appropriately, indent a paragraph, or look for capitalizing proper nouns. And then there are those spelling and vocabulary goals where you might choose this goal if a student is constantly using the same words over and over, or they could use some help with adding sensory words to help make their writing more descriptive. These are the writing goals that you would work with your students on as you go through the year. And in this section, they would write their goal. They would come up with their goal plan, and then they would reflect on their goal at the end of each month or every few weeks. However often you have them reflect on their goal.
The next section of my writer's notebook was the writing tools section. And this is likely going to be, if you have this section, the most used section of your Writer's Notebook. This is where you might include any writing prompts that they would use for free writing. You would include revising and editing checklists to help them revise and edit their writing. When it comes time to that, you might have a set of word lists that students can use to help vary their vocabulary. I have one in my Writer's Notebook that's called 'Use Your Senses', it has a list of sound words and taste words and small words and so on so that students can begin to use sensory words in their writing. I also have another writing tool sheet that's called 'Use This, Not That', it helps students to replace boring words with more exciting ones. So there is a section with alternatives to using the words said and an alternative to using the word nice and thing and stuff, all those words that we want to teach our students to replace with more sophisticated vocabulary. In this section is where you have your students keep all of those writing tools that they might use to help improve their writing. It's kind of their tool box, so to speak, that they can refer to when they're working on their own.
The third section of my writer's notebook is the practice and progress section. This is where I'm keeping all of my conference notes that I use with my students. It's written in kid friendly form so that students can look back at our conference notes and reference that when they are working on their own following the conference. It's a place where I write down the date for our next conference that students know when we will be meeting again and what they should be working on. In the meantime, conferencing should be a huge portion of your writing time together, and that's the time where you can really help students work on their goals, their writing goals. It's the time where you can really get to know individual writer's in your classroom. I also had students keep several loose leaf pieces of paper in this section that they could use for free writing any time that they had the opportunity to do that. It was right there in one spot in their notebook. Of course, as you begin working on specific writing pieces that your writing curriculum requires, you might have them working outside of their notebook and not writing directly in their notebook. Perhaps you have them use templates or graphic organizers. And of course, that's totally fine for you to have them do that outside of the Writer's Notebook, but the loose leaf papers are there and are great for when students are free writing, you might also have them have a separate spiral notebook or composition notebook where they do all their writing. It's mostly a preference of what works best for you and your students. The last thing that I keep in this section is a page that's called 'My Writing Ideas', this is where I have students write down any ideas that they want to keep for future writing pieces so that they don't forget. This is great for students to then draw upon when they are ready to brainstorm for a new writing piece.
And just like my Reader's Notebook, the final section of my Writer's Notebook is that writing resources section where I have students store any important handouts that I give them during our mini lessons that they can then reference later on in their writing time. These are those handouts if you're teaching a specific writing genre and you want them to have something in front of them while they're working on their writing piece. This is where you will store that particular handout. And again, there should be a table of contents where students can then record the title and number their pages so that they have easy access to any handout that you might give them.
I will also link to a video of me walking through my own personal Writer's Notebook that you can use in reference as you begin creating your own. I will link to that video in the show notes. You can get everything that we've been talking about in this episode over at classroomnook.com/podcast/31, including those video tutorials that I mentioned, as well as the blog posts that I have also mentioned in this episode.
Now that you have a good idea about what goes into a Reader's Notebook. Let's talk a little bit about managing your notebook and using it effectively with your students. If possible, you will want to introduce your students to the Reader's and Write'rs Notebook system right at the beginning of the school year. Back in episodes 29 and 30, I did a complete walk through of how to launch both Reader's and Writer's Workshop. If you're using a notebook system like I'm describing in this episode, this is going to be the time to do it. If you missed either of those episodes, I will link to them in the show notes. However, if you're listening to this episode later on in the year, you can definitely introduce it mid-year and have some success with it. But in either case, be sure to be intentional and clear about the purpose of the notebook. And above all, be consistent. You can't introduce the notebook to your students and then use it one day, then go several days without using it, and then try to bring it back and hope that your students will remember how to use it. Just like anything else that you do in your classroom, you have to be consistent with it, purposeful with it, and intentional with how you're using it in your classroom.
Logistically, I've always found it helpful for students to keep their notebooks on a shelf in my classroom as opposed to in their desks or cubby somewhere. Having students keep their notebooks all together in one spot in your classroom makes it really easy for you to quickly access each notebook when you want to review a reading passage or a writing response that they were doing, or check on their reading and writing progress rather than having to go to a student's cubby or desk and paw through whatever is in there. Find a spot in your classroom where you can keep it and then have the students grab them from there. Then at the start of your writer's or reader's workshop, you're going to have your students go and grab their notebook and bring it to the gathering area or to their desk or wherever you have them begin their writer's or reader's workshop for that day. For me, I would begin my Reader's and Writer's Workshop each day at our smart board. I would call the students over to the gathering area where we would then open up our goals section of our notebook, whether it's the reading or writing goals section. And I would always have them review their goal for the month. They reviewed this daily, although that might sound like a little overkill. Daily review of the goal would help put the goal at the forefront of their mind as they began their workshop time together. It was that constant reminder of what they were working towards, and quite often I would have them turn to a partner and verbalize their reading or writing goal with a partner and explain to their partner how they're going to be working on reaching that goal for that day. Again, verbalizing the goal is going to help ingrain the goal in their minds. We want them to be goal focused students. I would also have them review the information from any recent conferences that we might have had. Remember, this is going to be kept in either the reading records section or in the reading progress and practice section of the notebook. This helped to set the purpose and the intention for their day, and typically the information that we discussed in their conference was tied to their reading or writing goals. So the two things went hand in hand and it was the perfect way to begin our workshop time.
As the students moved into their individual reading and writing time, students would then use other sections of their notebook. For example, in Reader's Workshop, I would often have my students typically two to three times a week, make reading responses in the reading responses section of their notebook. Sometimes I would allow them to choose from a list of responses or reading prompts or other times I would specifically give them a type of response that I wanted them to complete when I wanted them to put a specific skill or strategy into action in their own reading. On the other hand, in Writer's Workshop, students might use the writing tools section of their notebook to help them revise and edit their own writing pieces. Remember, there is things like those editing checklists to make sure that they have capital letters and correct punctuation, things like that in their notebook that they can refer to to help them improve their writing. And of course, in both cases, with both reading and writing, you'll need to teach students how to use each reading and writing tool inside their notebook. But over time, students will become more independent.
Let me give you a couple of tips on how to teach students to use their notebooks. The Reader's and Writer's Notebook can be a little overwhelming to students when you give them all the materials up front so you can have them assemble their Reading and Writing Notebook at the beginning of the year, but only introduce maybe one section or one sheet from the each section at a time so that students can really get to know how to use that particular tool in their notebook. In the episodes 29 and 30 from the past two weeks where I talk about launching Reader's and Writer's Notebook, I discuss the importance of really taking your time and introducing the routines and the procedures for everything that you're doing in your classroom. The same is true for your notebook. Introduce one particular component, teach them the routine and the procedure for using that particular component of their notebook. Tell them and model for them how to use it so that they can then begin to use it on their own. Use your mini lessons to help teach the individual components of your notebook and as a bonus tip, have your own Reading and Writing Notebook that you use for yourself during reader's and writer's workshop. Your notebook could include things like your conference notes that you have for each student, or it's maybe the place where you keep your lesson plans for your Reader's and Writer's Notebook. If they see you using a notebook, they're going to be more prone to use their own notebook and view it as a valuable resource for reader's and writer's workshop.
That brings me to the last thing that I want to talk about today, and that is the benefits of using a notebook with your students. The notebook benefits both you and your students so, so much. For you, the notebook is your one stop shop for everything that your students are doing in their reading and writing. So you don't have to go here and you don't have to go there to find and put together all the pieces of what your students are working on. Everything is in one place and you're good to go. The contents inside the notebook are also great for supporting you in your parent-teacher conferences or any other special education meetings because you can refer back to their notebook when you're talking about individual students. There are a ton of benefits for the students as well. They're going to learn organizational skills and they're going to learn how to be held accountable for their reading and writing. They also have everything that they need in one place. They learn to use writing and reading tools to help improve their reading and writing. So a Writer's or Reader's Notebook is going to have massive impact on your students in their learning. It also teaches them responsibility. After you initially teach those routines and procedures for using a Reader's Notebook or a Writer's Notebook, it's going to be the student's responsibility to remember to complete their reading log or to reference the revising and adding checklists when they're working on their writing. Having the Writer's or Reader's Notebook just helps to set them up for success in learning those organization and responsibility skills. The thing about a Reader's or Writer's Notebook is there is no set format set in stone, which means you can create a Reader's or Writer's Notebook that works for you. You can create sections in your Reader's and Writer's notebook that best represent your writing and reading curriculum and represent the way that you like to have your students organize their reading and writing materials.
If you would like to use my Reader's or Writer's Notebook as a model, I have those available for you and I will link to them in my notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/31, I have them available in both printable and digital format. Like I mentioned before, we are likely, a lot of us, heading into a year with at least some virtual teaching so having that digital Reader's or Writer's Notebook will help you to use it both in the classroom and then it will transition seamlessly when they are trying to use it at home as well. I will get a link to both of those in the show notes if you want to use mine as a model for your own Reader's and Writer's Notebook.
All right friend, that is all I have for you today. Remember to head to the show notes for everything that I've mentioned in today's episode, and I will be back again next week with more teacher goodness. Bye for now.
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