Writing Prompts: For Writer's Notebooks twenty-eight lessons to inspire originality in your classroom's writer's notebooks
Hi, I'm Corbett Harrison, WritingFix's Webmaster since 2001, and during the 2010-2011 school year, I coordinated a series of local workshops that directly led to the creation of this resource page. If you are a teacher interested in using writer's notebooks as part of your writing workshop, I hope you find the ideas posted here invaluable. Until this project, my students wrote mostly in journals, which we also have a resource page for here at WritingFix; having grown a bit bored with journals personally, I wanted to explore a new tool for my classroom while I learned alongside other local teachers. I am amazed at how much success I had and continue to have with writer's notebooks.
This writer's notebook collection of twenty-six lessons is considered a "finished project" here at WritingFix as of June of 2011. Personally, I am still working with writer's notebooks and will continue to do so. You can follow my continued work with writer's notebooks at my pre-writing page at my own website. We've also established awriter's notebook interest group at our site-sponsored ning. Even though this webpage is "complete," we expect great conversations and ideas to continue being shared at the ning. Join us there!
How this page was created: If you're a member of our Writing Lesson of the Month E-mail Network, you know that each month we revise and celebrate one of the WritingFix mentor-text lessons. Members of our network receive an e-mail on the first day of every month directing them to a high-quality lesson that was created by a Nevada teacher taking one of our local lesson-design workshops. During the 2010-2011 school year, every lesson had been revised to include a new writer's notebook suggestion that could be used to enhance the pre-writing students would do as they prepared to create rough drafts for the monthly lessons or prompts
The writer's notebook suggestions were added as optional steps to our featured monthly lessons, and I personally used the opportunity to create my own teacher model a writer's notebook. Long ago, I learned how important it was to show my students one of my own personal journals when I asked them to begin using a journal in my classroom. As part of this project, I wanted to end up with a writer's notebook I could show my students. I am so glad I did this. I am really pleased with my writer's notebook, and I can tell you that it really excites the students I show it to. "Do we get to make one of those too?" they always ask.
What makes both my journal and my writer's notebook really special and fun to look through is my inclusion of "Mr. Stick," a non-threatening drawing tool I teach and require my own students to use in their journals and--now--notebooks. Mr. Stick, who is also known in my classroom as our "Margin Mascot," helps my artistically challenged students (and me!) create a visual journal and notebook that they're proud to look back through for ideas for upcoming workshops. Including Mr. Stick in our pre-writing remains one of the most simple yet effective tools I've ever added to my classroom.
On this page, I provide direct links to all twenty-four writer's notebook lessons and prompts that were revised during 2010-2011, our "Year of Writer's Notebooks" at WritingFix.
Should Writer's Notebook Pages Even Have Lessons attached to them? This is an interesting question. I agree whole-heartedly with Ralph Fletcher, author of A Writer's Notebook. Ralph (pictured at right) says, "I see a tendency for teachers to direct students to use the notebook in a particular way. While I understand this, I would caution against turning the writer's notebook into a teacher-directed workbook. To the extent that the notebook becomes our thing, it loses power for the students. Somehow, some way, students must feel that they own their writers notebooks."
I am 100% about students owning their notebook's ideas too. But I also believe that students need training at the beginning of the year on how to keep a notebook, and I believe they need re-fresher lessons at strategic intervals throughout the year. Keeping a writer's notebook is a very challenging concept to the majority of my students. They are often baffled when I explain how their notebooks need to house their personal connections for future writing assignments. Their eyes sometimes glaze when I tell them I want them to find ways to create notebooks that are completely original in form and idea. "What does that even mean?" and "Can't I just keep a journal?" are questions I get early on.
During the first two weeks of school, I do lot of structured writer's notebook lessons; this is my students' "training" for using a writer's notebook as a pre-writing tool. In October, I cut back to one assigned notebook lesson a month, which is my way of reminding them to keep exploring ways to be unique as they think about the stories, poems, and themes we discuss every day. 90% of the time, my students' notebooks are their own, which means they don't need me to assign them a notebook task.
Lessons, like the twenty-six found on this page, can be used to "train" students, and they can be used to "refresh" originality, if your students need that.
The First Two Lessons inspired by our Mentor Texts of the Year (2010-2011)
Inspired by Ralph Fletcher's A Writer's Notebook and Pat Brisson's The Summer My Father Was Ten.
If you have an original way you use A Writer's Notebook, consider sharing it with us here! At WritingFix, we freely share our ideas with the world; we hope our teacher uses see value in sharing back with us and with the rest off our WritingFix community.
Inspired by Marissa Moss's Amelia's NotebookSeries.
If you have an original way you use Amelia's Notebook, consider sharing it with us here! At WritingFix, we freely share our ideas with the world; we hope our teacher uses see value in sharing back with us and with the rest off our WritingFix community.
Share Your Classroom Notebook Strategies at our Ning!
We've built an online forum for teacher-users to share ways they've used writer's notebooks.
Twenty-Seven WritingFix Lessons/Prompts to inspire Originality in your Students' Notebooks for Class (throughout 2010-2011, we posted the following revised WritingFix lessons as part of our lesson/prompt of the month program.)
Increase Students' Pre-writing with Writer's Notebooks: One of our on-going themes at WritingFix is to increase thoughtful activities and tools for our students to use when they are pre-writing. The great teacher and author, Donald Graves, once suggested that when the writing process is really being taught, 85% of a student's time can be spent in the pre-writing step. I often ask teachers, "Other than clustering, listing, and filling out graphic organizers, what else can we do to reach for that lofty goal of 85%?" A great answer to that question is teaching students to keep writer's notebooks. A writer's notebook is a personal and powerful pre-writing tool.
Below are lessons and prompts from WritingFix where I've added a writer's notebook element in order to increase the amount of time students think and pre-write before composing a rough draft. Please note that each lesson comes with a teacher's model of a notebook page so that students can be inspired by an adults' efforts at pre-writing; you can certainly pass off my notebook pages as your own without offending me, but my hope in including my teacher model is to inspire you to create your own teacher model. Remember, if you enjoy the "Mr. Stick" additions on each teacher model I have made, visit my own website'spre-writing page to access all of my Mr. Stick materials.
A chapter book-inspired notebook page: What Your
Room Shows!
inspired by the opening two pages of Robert McCammon's Boy's Life and Old Black Fly by James Ayelsworth
This lesson is designed to show students how they might respond to an idea (and a frame) from a chapter book and an alphabet book in their writer's notebooks. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Karen McGee.
This lesson teaches the importance of selecting the most interesting adjectives when showing writing. Students create a notebook page that features four, well-crafted showing phrases. Using Post-its, the finished page can be used as a "riddle" for fellow classmates.
A chapter book notebook prompt: Embarrassing
Moment Leads
inspired by the first chapter from Christopher Paul Curtis' The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to an idea from a chapter book in their writer's notebooks. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Barbara Cuitino.
A picture book-inspired notebook prompt: Personifying
Punctuation
inspired by Robin Pulver's
Punctuation Takes a Vacation
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to an idea from a picture book in their writer's notebooks. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Courtney Hurlbert.
A chapter book-inspired notebook page: To Imitate
Two Natural Writers
inspired by select passages from Patricia MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain & Tall and Jane Yolen's Welcome to the Sea of Sand
This lesson is designed to show students how real authors use word choice to create visual imagery of natural scenes. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Joni Martindale.
A poem-inspired notebook page: Hubris
at the Bat
inspired by Christopher Bing's picture book celebration of Casey at the Bat.
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to a theme from a poem in their writer's notebooks. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Desiree Gray.
This lesson will have students use our Serendipitous Character Maker at WritingFix to launch a notebook page about a unique character they create. Exploring both adjectives and verbs, the students will ultimately create a showing paragraph about their notebook's character.
A poetry-inspired notebook page: An Animal Sounds
Collection
inspired by Douglas Florian's
insectlopedia and the poetry of Ogden Nash
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to a picture book author's use of word choice in their writer's notebooks. It was inspired by two lessons submitted to WritingFix by teachers Denise Gallues and Dena Harrison.
A poem-inspired notebook page: Little Toy
Friend Poems
inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "The Dumb Soldier"
This lesson has students brainstorm and illustrate possible topics for Poems about Lost Toys. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Regan Ringler-Hartzell.
A picture book-inspired notebook page: Hoots & Howl
Poetry
inspired by Joan Horton's
Halloween Hoots and Howls
This lesson is designed to show students how they might create seasonal word-banks in their notebooks to use in future poetry assignments. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Karen McGee.
A picture book-inspired notebook page: Parody
Launches
inspired by Jon Scieszka's Science Verse and Alan Katz's Take Me Out of the Bathtub
This lesson is designed to show students how to create short parodies of poems and songs that can become longer pieces of poetry later. It was created by combining two lessons from our 2004 Pinon Poetry Festival.
A language-inspired notebook page: Paradox/Oxymoron
Collections
inspired by the opening paragraph of Louis Sachar's Holes and Jack Johnson's song, Inaudible Melodies
This lesson is designed to show students how they might celebrate language on a notebook page, then develop one of their page's ideas into a poem later. It was inspired by two lessons submitted to WritingFix by teachers Kelly Nott and Jamie Priddy.
Students press the buttons on our serendipity word game, and hopefully they'll end up with a crazy idea for two illustrations that they're willing to sketch in their writer's notebooks. During a future writer's workshop, students can be challenged to write the whole story that goes with one of their illustrations.
Students discuss and brainstorm interesting and original metaphors about love, then create a notebook page that explains some of their favorite ideas. One of these metaphors is then turned into a longer poem.
A history-inspired notebook page: Compared to a
Famous Person
inspired by Louise Borden's historical picture book, A. Lincoln and Me
In preparation for writing a comparison/contrast essay about a historical figure, students create a notebook page that has them compare themselves to a figure from history they find personally interesting.
A vocabulary-inspired notebook page: Vocabulary
Fashion Shows
inspired by Debra Frasier's picture book Miss Alaineus
Inspired by both Debra Frasier's book and an idea from Barry Lane's 51 Wacky We-Search Reports, students imagine two of their vocabulary words have been personified. They must design an outfit, personality, and/or profession for their personified vocabulary word for their writer's notebooks. Later, they pretend their vocabulary word is a model at a fashion show, and they describe it walking up and down the runway.
I got a really great idea for using this book while teaching an interesting lesson about how nouns can become adjectives, and when one does that to an noun, you often end up with an interesting idea for a story title.
a chapter book-inspired notebook lesson: Serendipitous
Character Names
inspired by The Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley
Re-read just the first page of one of my favorite books from boyhood, and I had a brand new idea for a lesson on collecting interesting introductions for stories or essays.
teaching grammar in context: Wild Weather
Sentences
inspired by Brave Irene
by William Steig
With Common Core State Standards breathing down my neck, I am working on some writing lessons for the notebook that teach grammatical ideas (without worksheets!).
a literature-inspired notebook lesson: Tasting an
Oxymoron
inspired by an excerpt from Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to an idea from literature in their writer's notebooks.
a poetry-inspired notebook lesson: The Butcher's
Tale
inspired by a sonnet, "Reuben Bright," by E. A. Robinson
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to a poem from literature in their writer's notebooks.
a short story-inspired notebook lesson: Fortune
& MisFortune
inspired by a short story, "The Monkey's Paw," by W. W. Jacobs
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to a short story in their writer's notebooks.
a pun-inspired notebook lesson: Puns
& Punctuation
inspired by a style of writing noted in The Tom Swift Adventure Series
This lesson is designed to show students how they might choose to respond to an idea from literature in their writer's notebooks.
This lesson is designed to help students create a piece of descriptive writing about an animal creatively solving a problem.
A chapter book-inspired notebook page: Beyond
Once Upon a Time...
inspired by the opening of Avi's chapter book, Crispin: The Cross of Lead
This lesson is designed to show students how they might collect and illustrate "showing leads" in their writer's notebooks so that they can be transformed into longer stories later during a writer's workshop block. It was inspired by a lesson submitted to WritingFix by teacher Jenelle Sumrall.
We're Seeking Original Ideas for Teacher Models of Writer's Notebook Pages: Join us by Submitting Yours! (we're looking for teachers who recognize the value of showing their own pre-writing attempts to their students)
Four WritingFix lessons that might inspire an original writer's notebook page from you: One of my "Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson," my popular differentiated instruction workshop for writing teachers, challenges teachers to share more of their own writing during all steps of the writing process. Every lesson you can access here on this page features my teacher model of a notebook page that I show my students before asking them to create notebook pages of their own. At right, you can click on the image and see the page I created for October's Writing Lesson of the Month for 2010. This is a notebook page I created to complement another teacher's posted lesson at WritingFix; to Karen McGee's original lesson, I added an original writer's notebook page idea.
We want teacher users to recklessly adapt the lessons we post here at WritingFix. Adding a notebook page to a lesson that doesn't have one is a really great way to do the type of adapting we hope for. Through adaptations of others' lessons, you truly learn the best lesson design skills.
Below are four lessons that currently do not have a writer's notebook page as part of their teaching process, but they are four lessons that I believe could be improved with the addition of one. If you agree and are inspired to create a teacher model of a notebook page that would enhance students' pre-writing for the lessons below, I am challenging you to share your page. Digital photographs of original writer's notebook teacher models for these four lessons can be posted using the link below each of the following lesson's titles.
Sharing back with a generous educational site--like WritingFix--is a powerful way to keep your "teaching Karma" both high and positive.
How could a teacher's notebook page improve pre-writing while teaching this picture book-inspired writing lesson?
Writing Prompts:
Should Writer's Notebook Pages Even Have Lessons attached to them? This is an interesting question. I agree whole-heartedly with Ralph Fletcher, author of A Writer's Notebook. Ralph (pictured at right) says, "I see a tendency for teachers to direct students to use the notebook in a particular way. While I understand this, I would caution against turning the writer's notebook into a teacher-directed workbook. To the extent that the notebook becomes our thing, it loses power for the students. Somehow, some way, students must feel that they own their writers notebooks." 
