The One About Launching Writer's Notebooks

It’s a new semester in Boone, and it’s still cold and snowy. My final semester of graduate school is well under way, and I’m trying to soak in every last moment with my sweet friends before graduation in May. With this semester comes a new round of classes, one of which especially speaks to my heart as we consider the role of writing in the elementary classroom.

As we began our exploration, I was taken back to my own days and experiences with writing in elementary school. I happily recalled the way my teachers would model their writing process for us on the overhead projector before releasing us to try a given technique or strategy on their own. I loved everything about the writing environments that my teachers would create, but I especially enjoyed when I had the opportunity to write myself. I found it both fun and relatively easy to put my ideas on paper.

Looking back on those experiences now, I realize how fortunate I was to have had the opportunity to write in school. In classrooms today, writing has taken a backburner to the high-stakes standardized testing and “core” subjects. Teachers are given inadequate resources and preparation to feel equipped at providing writing instruction, and students find themselves at a loss for both what to write about and how to do it. With these things in mind, I spent this week considering a few key questions that could lead to the successful launching of writer’s notebooks in today’s classrooms.

Where/how should we go about finding writer’s notebook ideas? How do we help get children beyond “I don’t know what to write?”

People are motivated by choice. We know this as teachers, but it rings even more true as we consider the writers in our classroom. If we want students to write, and to write successfully, then we must give them the opportunity to write about topics that they are passionate about. Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli put it this way in their book Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6, “Powerful writing comes from students having the opportunity to choose their writing topics and lots of time to put words to paper” (2017, p.16). But how do we go about helping our students find ideas for their writing? The quick answer: We facilitate opportunities for students to generate ideas. In chapter three of their text, Dorfman and Cappelli refer to Nancy Atwell’s concept of writing territories which Atwell defines as, “the treasure chests of [writers’] hearts and minds where they store precious memories about people, places, events, and objects” (1998, p. 52). By encouraging students to consider what the know a lot about, teachers are helping students to discover their writing territories, and are in turn empowering them to unlock story ideas that they can now more easily explore on their own. For those students who have difficulty narrowing their writing territory to a more specific topic/story, Dorfman and Cappelli suggest using an inverted triangle as a graphic organizer. I tried the technique in my own writing notebook this week. You can check it our below:

Beyond that, my peers and I began exploring the role of maps as a form of brainstorming writing ideas for students. Dorman and Cappelli introduce teachers to three different types of idea generating maps including heart maps, hand maps, and neighborhood maps. What I like most about these concept maps as a future teacher is the way that they can provide varying levels of support for the variety of learners in my classroom. This means that while one student’s heart map could be filled with pictures to represent their ideas, another student’s heart map could be filled with only words. The maps should be kept in students’ writers’ notebooks so that they can be referred back to continually throughout the year as an answer to moving children past the statement, “I don’t know what to write.” For more on how two teachers from Texas use heart maps in their classroom, click on the picture below:

How do we (and our students) get better at writing?

Like anything, we (and our students) can get better at writing by doing just that… writing. After all, it’s like the old saying goes, “Practice makes perfect.” Granted, I’m not sure that writing is ever truly finished or perfect, but you understand my point. Any writer, at any age or experience level, can become a better writer by simply writing more.

In addition to this, we also need to expose our learners to quality examples of writing. These quality examples can be found in many places, but most importantly, they can be found in the mentor texts that we read. Authors and poets alike can, and should, serve as our coaches and our partners in the writing process. Dorfman and Cappelli claim that by finding and exposing students to stellar literature we “will inspire [them] to “copy” the author’s style, focus, and organization” (2017, p. 7). The best part about including mentor texts in the classroom? They serve as examples that show, rather than tell, students how to write well!

Another thing that we, as teachers, can do to encourage our writers to grow is to promote writing in all of its many forms. Amy Krouse Rosenthal does a wonderful job of depicting the plethora of forms that writing that can take on in her book Textbook: Not Exactly a Memoir. My own writer’s notebook entry, inspired by her piece “Mundane: Highs and Lows” can be found below:

So, there you have it: My thoughts on launching writer’s notebooks in your classroom and my answers to two common questions. All in all, the past two weeks of graduate school have reminded me of the importance of writing in our classrooms, and it has equipped me with ideas about how to structure and facilitate meaningful writing experiences for all of my students.

For more information about the resources listed above check out:

Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature, K-6. (2nd ed). United States: Stenhouse Publishers.

Rosenthal, A.K. (2016). Textbook: Not exactly a memoir. New York, NY: Penguin Random House LLC.