Leap Into Literacy
Spring 2017~5th Grade
Strategy Group lesson
There is also a Facebook group for the Units of Study that can be a wonderful resource. This is the place to go for all things Workshop. You can search by topic or post a question and get responses from teachers from all over. It is also great to get inspired or enlightened. Search for Units of Study In Reading TCRWP join this group.
Reader's Notebook Ideas
Reading is thinking. An organized notebook can help our students hold those thoughts and bring them into conversations with peers in a book club or with teachers in a conference. I came across a notebook set up at Teacher’s College that I really like. Once I set up my notebooks this way, I used it for years with success.
Students can use post its to create four tabs. The four tabs are read aloud, independent reading, book club, and goals. In addition to the tabs, I like to save a few pages in the beginning of the notebook for a “books I’ve read” section and a “books I want to read” section (I believe these ideas came from Fountas and Pinnell).
The first tab is the read aloud section. I used the read aloud section in a few ways. When we finish a read aloud, I make copies of a picture of the cover of the book. We use a glue stick to attach it in our notebook, and I give my students time to reflect about what they learned from the characters or the story. We take time to write about how the story has impacted us. I like using it this way because some of the read alouds we share with our students have big life lessons, and I like to recognize their impact when we finish. I also use this section at times during my mini lesson. If I want my students to try a strategy, I usually demonstrate first using text already read out loud. With certain mini lessons, we’ll open to this section in our notebooks to try the same strategy and then talk to our partners. I usually reserve a small part of the notebook for this section.
Our independent reading section takes up the bulk of our notebook. This is where students jot or store post its with jots. We refer to this section in conferences. The book club section holds all of our book club work. Finally, the goal section holds the goals that students set for themselves with our guidance during conferences. You only need a few pages for it, but I have found this section really helpful to focus students on what they are working on while they are reading.
Just like conferring notes, you might need to make adjustments to fit your needs. This notebook set up worked for me, but there are other options that also work well for other teachers using reading workshop. Donalyn Miller has her students use a genre chart and a graffiti page to capture favorite quotes. I never used these in my notebooks, but I love the ideas! Tara Smith wrote about her reading notebooks on the Two Writing Teachers blog. There is a link to her post below along with a sample notebook page from Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Project.