Ways to Use Writer's Notebooks

gather ideas for future writing
--at home, in the park, on the playground, in the car, at McDonalds
record powerful images
word lists
--parts of speech, words they like the sound of, words that they stumble across during reading
notes from mini-lessons and craft lessons
--either as notes that students take, or glue ins charts that we create as a class
record their attempts at a strategy offered in mini-lessons
things that make them wonder
situations going around them that evoke an emotion
--paste in writer's helpers given to them by teachers

Reading as a writer
--stalking sentences that they like
--stalk phrases that they like
--techniques that they would like to try
--wonderings about writer's craft
--things that they would like to examine as a class
--examples of real writers using the techniques that we learned in class
--examples of authors breaking the rules
--studies of sentence variety
--studies of construction within a genre

Ideas I would like to try
--table of contents (add on as we go)
--use more class starters (as a management, focusing, prethinking tool)
--fluency writing (at the beginning of the year)
--record reactions to powerful events happening on around them
--more writing process reflection
--questions for the teacher for conferencing

Grading
A page count. I would also like to include a weekly page as a homework assignment.
If a student has something they would really like me to look at they need to flag it and put a sticky note on the cover explaining to me what I am looking at and why. Checklist of give-it-a-tries from the minilessons.

I like to try to help writers find a way of organization that works for them, not me. I teach them to use tabs or sticky notes as tabs.