Reading and Wriitng Notebook FAQ

I just started reading The Cafe Book yesterday by The Sisters and I am already so excited to make some changes in my classroom because of it. You can bet that I will be doing some serious posting about it during the next month as I begin to launch it in my classroom.

I got a really great email from Lindsay today and thought I would answer her questions on the blog about my reading and writing notebooks. I thought that some of you might have the same questions yourself.

The first question she asked was, "Do your kids have both reading and writing notebooks?"

The notebook that I use in my classroom is a combined reading and writing notebook. That is why I tend to call them their interactive notebook. I have thought about using 2 separate ones, but in my opinion it makes sense to have it all together. They might be learning a reading strategy, but I also want them to think about them while they are writing since others will be reading their writing. In my class, students also still have a regular binder where we store some papers as well. 

The second question was, "Are they responsible for bringing the notebooks to class each day or do you house them in your room? If they are responsible for that, what happens if they forget or lose their notebooks?

I am lucky enough to have the capabilities to store the notebooks in my classroom. (I will take a picture of where I store them when I go up to school later this week.) Since I teach middle school, I only have 3 classes because 6th grade Language Arts classes are double blocked. Each of my classes has a crate that is labeled with their class periods on it, and that is where they pick their notebook up from and place it in each day. Generally, the notebooks do not leave my classroom, but it does happen. My students are responsible for completing a reading response letter each week, and sometimes they do not finish it in class so they must finish it for homework. Luckily, I have only had one lost and it was within the last 3 weeks of the semester. This student just began to do her things on notebook paper and then storing them in her regular binder for the class. When we redo them when they students get back from the break in their new composition notebooks, I am also planning on making some extras along the way for those who lose them or new students that I get. I also do a weekly notebook check to make sure that they are completing the activities and such. If their notebook is not in the crate they receive a 0 for it. I do drop their 2 lowest daily grades though for the 6 weeks, so it allows them to have an oops in there.

The third question was, "When you do the activities that are on your blog in the notebooks such as your author's purpose notes and flat vs. round characters, are the kids copying down whatever you do on the board/document camera, or are they self generating the notes?"

I do a mixture of both. Sometime it is necessary for them to just copy down what I need them to copy. A good example of this would be our Genre Notes that we took at the beginning of the school year. This was information that I just needed them to have right then before we could do some things with it. When we did the flat vs. round characters notes, I gave students the information for underneath the round and flat character flaps. They then had to use that information to help them identify what type of character we had in the picture book that we read to practice the concept. I almost always also have a sentence stem that students must complete on their note page for the day because I feel that is a great way to check for mastery. For example, with Author's Purpose I used the following stem: Knowing the author's purpose for a text is important because... I then give them the opportunity to answer this first and I walk around during this time. After a few minutes and I know that everyone has something written, I ask if anyone would like to share their sentence. 

As we rebuild our notebooks, I am planning on sharing more details about them with you all. I am planning on doing another Q&A post about them too in the next month, so ask away if you have any questions. :)