Reader's Notebooks

A week or so ago, I posted about my new reader's notebooks.  I wanted to share with you how my students are using them.  

First, I am introducing the notebooks slowly.  The first day we created Do's and Don'ts, took a tour of the notebook, and decorated the covers.  The next day, we read the Cafe menu and created reading goals.  Since I only have 5 students at a time, one worked with me on choose a goal or two while the others filled in their reading interests.  

     

For the next few days, we practiced using think-marks.  The students reviewed a strategy a day (5 minutes) and I showed them the sentence frame(s) for that strategy.  They independently read and filled in a practice stop & jot page (not one in their notebook, I wanted to give them time to practice and make mistakes).  We went over their use of the strategy and their writing until I knew they understood the strategy and how to write about that strategy.  

Now that my students have a few different strategies to write about, they read a book and used their notebooks to document their thinking.    We will continue to do this until Christmas break.  In January, I plan on introducing the reading response journal section.  

I am using paperclips as bookmarks for the response section and the stop & jot section.  The paper clip goes on the page the students are working on so they can quickly find the correct page.  

I might add ribbons to the paperclips to make them a little more fun.  

You can purchase the Reader's Notebook at my Teachers Notebook store.