In December, the TLF’s presented training for Writer’s Notebook. I attended a portion at each school and, of course, the workshops were extremely well done. Although I believe in the concept and most of the feedback was positive, I still wasn’t sure how our teachers (and students) would embrace the notebook. Well, yesterday was a great moment (for me at least) in our Writer’s Notebook implementation. Out on the observation trail, I arrived to a 3rd grade classroom during morning time. Students were completing various activties and an exciting thing happened – several students totally without prompting took out their writer’s notebooks and began adding an entry. How hard it was not to hug the teacher and students and cheer loudly right in the classroom! Of course, I plan to tell the teacher during our post observation conference and will certainly share the story with anyone who will listen. Kudos to Katie Chisholm and her students! This raised further my level of belief in writer’s notebook. Let’s see what happens! (And with your input perhaps, I need to decide whether or not to capitalize Writer’s Notebook…or is it writer’s notebook?) ~Annette Giaquinto
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I can identify with the “great moment”. I, too, embraced the concept of the Writer’s Notebook, but worried how students would react. I found that they immediately wanted to write in their writer’s notebook all the time! Despite the fact that these sixth graders switch classes each period and have a great deal to carry, they wanted to bring their writer’s notebooks to each class so they could continue to write! I love how their eyes light up when my co-teacher and I tell them that we are going to do a writer’s notebook activity. We learn so much about the students from the entries they enthusiastically share with us.
Kim Tucker