Reader's Notebooks

For my second post, I thought I'd share a big part of my language arts program...Reader's Notebooks. I know that many teachers use these, and everyone's got a different method and style. Here's mine!

At the start of the year, the kids were told that we'd be using Reader's Notebooks during our Reading Workshop time every day. They were given the option of using the notebooks that I provide or purchasing their own spiral bound notebooks. They're a collection of notes from mini-lessons, personal notes from their reading, and reading response letters (addressed to me) which are due every other week. I'd like to collect them every week but I've found it really difficult to get them all read, responded to, and returned fast enough (I teach 2 classes of language arts, so that means I'd have about 60 letters to get through every week).

This is the inside of the front cover. The first thing they see when they open their books is the rationale for the notebooks.

Next comes the proofreading page. It outlines what I'm looking for in their notes. Below that is the weekly schedule. The student who this belongs to has cut out only the schedule, but it was originally distributed with a list of the group members attached.

Next comes my Reading Notebook rubric. I believe it originally had another category for assessment, but I tweaked it to my own needs. I've got to apologize for this one...I got it from another blog and for the life of me, I can't remember which one. 

 Then we come to the Thinking Stems. Again, found them on another blog (perhaps Runde's Room?) and liked them so much that I borrowed them for my own use.

Then I've got my model letter. I found a letter I liked on Teaching My Friends and was inspired. So, I used that letter as a model for my own which then, in turn, was used as a model for my students. We went through it in class and discussed the issues of the friendly letter structure as well as the content. They were asked to make notes in the margins so that they could later refer back to them. I also made a point to provide it on green paper...I like being able to simply refer to the "green sheet." Makes things a little easier.

Finally, I've got my self-assessment slips. Students have to complete one for every reading response letter they submit. I think I'm going to tweak them a little bit for future use. I didn't include anything about capitalization (at least, not explicitly), and that is an area that many of my students are struggling with.

That's it for now! Check back soon as I will be posting our most recent completed art projects. I'm pretty excited about these...they were an awesome Pinterest find that I was so looking forward to recreating. If our works-in-progress are any indication of the final products, they will definitely be something to behold!