Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested
teachers are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop
and other ideas about supporting young adolescent writers and
readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Last year,
Juli kept a weekly journal from her Reading Workshop.
This year, Juli is continuing her journals, but this time she's
focusing on her Writing Workshop. Find out more about our project
at our Reading/Writing Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues
are embedded in these journals. Most often, when you click on
them, a PDF file will begin to download. You'll find a list of
the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's
Journals, find out how here.
"A writer's notebook gives you a place to live like a writer, not just in school during writing time, but wherever you are, at any time of day."
-- From A Writer's Notebook, Unlocking the Writer Within You, by Ralph Fletcher
Sixty minutes of writing every day? That's the suggestion!
This recommendation is enough to send the average Language Arts/English
instructor dashing to the teacher's lounge in despair. It's hard
enough getting to all the other requirements that our schools
and districts have created as a hedge against lowered expectations
and high school exit exams.
Don't give up. The recommendation is not as rigid as it may seem.
It's a guideline intended not only to keep your writers in good
working order, but help you create enough opportunities for writing
to reach and maintain a high expectation for your students.
Writer's Notebooks are perfectly suited to this.
That's what a writer's notebook is for. It gives you a place to write down what makes you angry or sad or amazed, to write down what you noticed and don't want to forget, to record exactly what your grandmother whispered in your ear before she said goodbye for the last time. (Ralph Fletcher)
We introduce Writer's Notebooks during Unit 1, "The Writerly
Life." Everyone gets one, even the teachers. But this year
we started ours ahead of time, so that we could have something
to share with the kids as they start their notebooks.
How we share from our notebooks
When I shared writing from my notebook, I chose a snippet about
Flash and Meaghan, our Cardigan Welsh Corgis. They provide a wealth
of writing ideas for me. This time I'm experimenting with sounds.
It's Saturday morning. I'm longing to sleep in, and there's that clattering sound again, like an old train going by. Click, clack, clatter-clatter.
It's there every weekend and vacation morning. I can set my clock by it. The two of them bouncing around full of early morning enthusiasm, and all I want to do is relax into the sheets and fall back asleep.
So, why do dogs wake up early? I think it must be that they learn to love a routine. Getting up at 6 AM, eating by 7, and then going out for the day suits them just fine. It's the sitting around quietly waiting for a late breakfast. . .
Some mini-lesson ideas and a rubric
Mini lessons help kids see how Writer's Notebooks reflect our
lives and our writing. Here's a list of the ones we're teaching:
* Writers collect entries out of the details of their lives
* Writing can grow from: observations or rereading previous pieces or memories
* Writers have real purposes for writing
* Writers select a seed idea from entries
* Writers develop that seed idea by writing more entries about it
* "What could I make of this?"
* How to be sure seed ideas are "seeds"
* Write with focus and detail
* Write a range of different genres or personal narratives
But we've only taught a few of these mini lessons so far. Working
with a seed idea is one thing we will visit repeatedly during
the year.
We also introduced the Writer's
Notebook Rubric. It serves as a guide for our kids to help
them begin to understand how this is a different type of writing.
We developed this rubric using several notebook checklists from
the Writing Project at Columbia Teachers College. It's the first
year we've used it so we'll know better in a few months how it
will work.
Earlier on the Reading /Writing Workshop Project listserv chat,
Amy and I had a conversation about Writer's Notebooks as we struggled
with how to introduce them to our kids. We were lucky enough to
have MiddleWeb editor John Norton join in. He's got some great
advice for all of us, from a professional writer's point of view.
And best of all, he included some writing from his own Writer's
Notebook.
John's advice:
I'll bet most of you have writers in your community who (a)
keep writer's notebooks, and (b) might be willing to visit your
classes to talk about the value of notebooks. Of course we're
all writers...but if they can bring one of their books to class,
the kids will be duly impressed!
A description of his notebooks:
I've been keeping notebooks for years, although not so well
organized as what Juli describes.
My notebooks usually have two types of notes -- ideas about craft,
and snatches of prose that might be used later in something. Often
it's something I can't quite define yet. I do this for non-fiction
and for fiction, although my non-fiction notes tend to end up
in the margins of the yellow legal pads I use when I'm in the
process of reporting. For example, visiting classrooms in a school.
These margin notes are similar to notebook entries... little scene-setting
ideas, an interesting poster on the wall...the expression of a
child... something funny the teacher says... material that can
enliven the writing when the time comes to pull it all together.
And a bit of John's Writer's Notebook:
Here's a random page or two from my current notebook for fiction
writing (I dream about fiction-writing more than I do it, but
dreams are important!)
CRAFT NOTES
-- "Lawrence Block in his book 'Spider, Spin Me a Web' talks
about opening stories and novels with action -- "begin in
the middle" -- and rely on flashbacks to fill in. One point
he makes is that once action is underway, readers are tolerant
of concise backgrounding because it will HELP them follow the
action. But they want the action to get underway first."
-- "Stephen King uses a lot of flashbacks. His flashback
scenes usually have their own action/suspense. Example - in Dreamcatcher,
the flashbacks to Duditz events and the early lives of the boys
are all action scenes in their own right. Look at his work with
'how does he do it' in mind...how does he transform the backstory
into mini action stories without distracting the reader from the
larger tale?"
SNATCH/SCENE
(This is something I've watched the fellow I bought my mountain
land from do many times. It occurred to me one day that I ought
to capture the process - the feeling of it. And worry later about
where it fit into something. I think writers begin to do this
as they realize that the writing will always feel more 'real'
if a scene is captured in the moment or when the inspiration to
write it down is most powerful....you can polish it up later.
In this case, I think I was imagining this scene as a strange
ballet performed by this huge man on this hulking machine.)
*Jake Boyd wrangles his Ford diesel tractor at a right angle to the roadbed and shoves the mounds of mica-specked mountain dirt on top of the drainage tile, smoothing out the surface with practiced ease. Lifting the rear blade with a hand-lever, he spins the huge machine on its rear tires, drops the front-load bucket with a great 'Clang!' and scoops up a pile of displaced black gravel, carefully spreading it over the new scar that bisects the steep road. He backs off a few yards, sets the engine to idle and leans back in the padded seat, lighting his third Vantage of the day. And he grins.*
This description could easily end up in a long-contemplated magazine
article about this fellow (real name: "Jake") who is
colorful enough for a personality profile. He "owns"
my current hometown of Little Switzerland, which includes about
40 acres and one building with four stores. Working title: "The
King of Little Switzerland."
****
Thanks to Ralph Fletcher and John, and my own attempts in my Writer's
Notebook, I think I'm beginning to get an idea of what this is
all about. Now, back to my writing
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Reader Workshop Index Page