Writer's Notebook

There's a method of journaling called Writer's Notebook that I tried out with both sections of my language arts classes this year.  There's a whole philosophy behind this system, but the two main elements are (1) a teacher's red pen will never "bleed" all over the students' work making corrections and (2) the students are held accountable for practicing different writing strategies and putting real thought into their entries.  When I evaluate their work, I'm required to confine my comments/scoring to a rubric that they've pasted in the back of the journal.  The theory is simple:  Creativity cannot flourish if a person's afraid of making mistakes. 

Last week I collected all thirty-three notebooks and read and commented on every child's entries from February 15 to the present.  At seven entries per week times five weeks (I should have collected them at 3 weeks), that's approximately 35 entries per student.  With 33 students in all, that makes approximately 1,155 entries.  That's a lot of reading. 

Maxie putting in his best effort

Luckily for me, I had help.

Arby diligently focusing on the job at hand

Lots of it!















Reading all of these was a bit more involved for me than it was for the cats, however I learned a lot. 

Some gems:

* "Long ago, when I was nine..."

* "Question: Was Rome built in a week or a month?"

* "I'd like to visit Rome someday.  I hear it's astonishing, breathtaking and unforgettable and if it's made out of marbles, that's pretty cool."

* "The only chocolate I don't love is white chocolate.  I honestly think it's insulting because it looks like vanilla."

* "What is a quantaray?  Wait for it...Wait for it...Looking in the dictionary..."  {and here the entry just stops, so I'm still waiting to learn what a quantaray is}

* "WHEN I WAS SMALLER, I WROTE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS."

* "Ping pong is pretty long to write, so I'll just write 'table tennis'."

* "If you think I'm pretty, you should see my step-mom."

* "O my God! Today my baby brother is five months old!  One more month and he gets to eat Gerber! Yay, Yay, Yay!"

* "Life is Life and it isn't always the way you want it to be.  I've come to learn that a long time ago."

Yeah, I enjoy being a teacher...