Writer’s Notebook Goodies to Remember!

They are a place to store ideas, brainstorm, work on poems or any type of writing.
To draft and edit/revise before final draft.
A safe place to be creative and experiment, doodle.
Free writes/quick writes.
Put favorite quotes, words, phrases.
Write questions for the instructor (for conferencing).
Journaling or reflecting after a paper is turned in.
Concrete concepts and strategies (like in a science classroom).
Record or reflect to world events (like 9/11).
Use for research data collection.
“Strategy Try Out Book” –Jill Diamond
Use in different content areas, not just writing.
Ownership of writing.
Organize by sections, use sticky notes to mark things they want to go back to and revisit.
Whatever the prompt on the board is has something to do with what you are teaching that day.
Use table of contents.
Don’t let them leave the classroom.
Use composition notebooks so the kids can’t tear out pages and reorganize them to get credit for pages they already got credit for.
Use prompts from stuff the kids are learning in their other classes, “What did you learn in science today?”