using a writer’s notebook

A notebook is a place where students, and teachers, become writers. The more they write the better, and the greater their sense of ownership the better.

Writer’s notebooks can be the focal point for all kinds of recording, imagining and generating of ideas. Many writers, writing about writing, talk about the need to get the words on the page, and those who write about writing notebooks value quantity. They recognise that much of what they write may not be useful or even of any quality but they see themselves as getting words on the page; the equivalent of distance running for an athlete. It builds stamina. It helps you to know your body and its limits and horizons, or in this case, the limits and horizons of the writing self. I very much value the exercise of non-stop writing, or free writing, although that is essentially an activity for the more fluent writer.

Initiating the content, form and style of the writing in writer’s notebooks is essential if students are to gain a sense of why they might want to write. They need to feel the power and pleasure of writing for themselves. So much of writing in school is directed by the teacher and the curriculum that students can lose sight of, or maybe never discover, the sense that writing can have real value and purpose. It can be used to develop thinking, for the visceral pleasure of words and language, in order to record important moments, to explore feelings and try and set things straight for a moment. The list of reasons for writing is endless, but sometimes the demands of writing in school can curtail that list. In order to help students discover how writing works best for them the teacher must balance that fine line between imposition and debilitating openness. Sometimes openness is more painful for teachers than for students. However, there are some students for whom choice is very problematic. Perhaps a child’s fear of open space and freedom of choice is not a reason for not offering that choice. It can be done gently, gradually, but should be there because by always directing the uncertain student, especially the student who is anxious to get things right, we risk disabling them in the long term. Another danger is that if we are too prescriptive we convey a mixed message. With one hand we say, write whatever you wish, and with the other we say, but it must be like this. So the light touch is important.

The key to openness and choice within safe bounds is the ability to offer possibilities, but to feel comfortable with the ideas and approaches that students generate themselves. The things that you offer are secondary to students’ ideas, and can be open to any kind of adaptation that students come up with. The great fear of teachers is that the time spent using writer’s notebooks is not used profitably. So teachers need to be really clear about the value of this kind of writing and what their expectations are.

One reason why writing in this context may seem to become stagnant is that the students are not clear about what they are doing and why they are doing it. And that may link to their teacher’s lack of certainty. Some students find great personal purpose in writing and feel no need to share their writing. Most writers really do enjoy sharing. It adds purpose and it sharpens performance. There are many ways of finding an audience for writer’s notebook entries:

• writing buddy; one trusted partner who becomes a careful listener and critical friend;

• writing partners; these might change from time to time and the focus of reading, listening and commentary may also change [the best bit; interesting choice of words or expressions; questions raised…]

• a writing circle; several students who sit together to hear extracts of each other’s work;

• free-flow: the expectation that students may wish to share their writing at different times during writing sessions;

• whole class celebrations or sharing sessions; these can focus on one or two longer pieces of writing or be limited to something as simple as one sentence from everyone around the circle;

• a class or group wiki or blog, where selected extracts can be shared and commented on;

• teacher response: what you have to say and the many different ways in which you respond to students’ writing in these notebooks is crucial.

Teacher’s responses

The most successful writer’s notebooks are those where the teacher writes in response to what students have written. They write in direct response to the student as one writer to another or as an accomplished reader to a serious writer. This engagement with an individual’s writing can have a significant impact on how the students see themselves as writers. That serious written response generally generates further writing and application to development, expansion, experimentation or consolidation. You don’t have to write to everyone every week, nor does what you say have to be very long. One very good rule is that it should never be longer than the student’s writing. You are aiming to be encouraging, interested, challenging. Saying what you like, and why, is helpful. Asking questions of the text is helpful. Sharing feelings, puzzlement, pleasure is helpful. One teacher spoke eloquently of the power of the words, ‘thank you’. Thanking writers for letting you hear or read their work can have a great impact. You will find your own ways of responding.

Teachers writing

Many teachers feel unsure about this. The truth is that students love the fact that you write and are generous in their praise. They like it when you get it just right and they are reassured when it doesn’t always go right for you. You may not always have time to write all the time because you will want to teach in different ways at different times. However, writing with students and sharing some of what you write has a big impact. You become a writer alongside them. 

The blank page is daunting. Sometimes it is useful to have something to start with. Here are some suggestions, in no particular order:

• one teacher I know prepares photocopied pages for writing; these might simply have a decorative border; they may have a picture in a corner or at the top; the picture may be accompanied by a sentence or two, for example, “I wonder who lives here?” next to the picture of a house; “Where does this road lead to?” “What is this person thinking?” These pages are available for those who wish to choose them;

• sentence starters are great prompts;  I dream of...;  Once...  ; Sometimes I wonder...; On the way to....; one teacher made pockets which held laminated sentence starter strips to hang at the side of the classroom or you can make books of ideas to which students contribute;

• word banks, word hoards; we are used to word banks and we can build on this idea by having boxes and baskets of words available on tables around the classroom; students can add to the collection; they should be delicious sounding words, unusual words, solid Anglo-Saxon words, technical, precise words; students can be encouraged to take a handful of words to get them started or to use as a challenge as they write; it can be stimulating to provide different sizes and kinds of card for words and phrases, including small tags or luggage labels; students may like to have a separate section of their notebook esp[ecially for lists of words;

• thesaurus sheets: I like to make my own thesaurus sheets from the adult thesaurus; I collect words together that are connected to a topic, but try and be quite adventurous in my choice; I once made a sheet of words that were connected with the texture and appearance of autumn fruits and vegetation, words like speckled, mottled, gnarled, wrinkled and students brought in to the classroom object which they thought were best described by different words; 

• make lists; listing is a remarkable generator for writing; a teacher noticed that some boys wrote lists again and again; when she talked to them about these lists [they were often characters from films or computer games] she found that  here were film scenarios, scripts, plots; 

• write letters, that you don’t or can’t send: to say something important; to someone who has left or who is no longer alive; to the tooth fairy or Dracula or Superman; to family members, near and far; letters are a very good form to choose when helping writers find their own voice;

• start with a drawing of a character or a place; write around the drawing in any way you wish, a character sketch, a snatch of dialogue, a monologue;

• write about the process of writing: how do students write in different subjects? Could they write a flow chart of their writing sequences? Write a portrait of themselves as writers; write about how they draft; think of ideas; revise; how has their writing changed; why have they chosen different topics or styles?

• look through a set of postcards; use one of them to start a poem or story; you can begin just by describing what you can see;

• look through a poetry anthology; choose one or two lines that you really like; use one of them to start a poem; if you are really clever, you can pick two lines and see if you can write a poem that starts with one found line and ends with another; you could find lines from your own writing to do this.

• write a list of interview questions and interview real and imaginary people: friends in class or abstract characters like summer or anger or a piano;

• write about the weather, or an ordinary day, or a place you know well –writers can draw on such records of seemingly ordinary things when writing something longer.

• Floor plan: Draw a floor plan of the first house or flat you remember living in [or indeed, any important home].This can be rough and not to scale. Label each room either in terms of its function [kitchen] or whose territory it chiefly was [Tom’s room, dad’s workshop]. Next use each room’s label as the heading of a column.  Without pondering, scribble down a list of words and short phrases under each heading. Don’t wait for the right words. There are none. Don’t fill up one column before going to the next. Jump around.

Don’t:

• correct or erase anything

• stop and think about anything

• even consider spelling or punctuation

• worry about neatness

• phone a parent or sibling to check on the details

• think that this is too silly to even bother with.

Now look. Are you surprised at any of the entries? Circle those that are even faintly intriguing. Draw lines between entries that seem even vaguely related. Take any paired terms now and put them at the top of a fresh sheet of paper. Start writing again at helter-skelter speed.

Ways of working with writing from the notebook:

• write about a subject in a different genre, changing from an autobiographical story to a poem, for example, or a story to script or newspaper article;

• rework a confused section;

• try out a different voice, a different storyteller;

• take a long piece of writing and make it shorter;

• take a short piece of writing and make it longer;

• choose something in note form and expand on it;

• imagine a different audience and change the writing with that audience in mind;

• read a section of your notebook to someone else and ask them to ask you questions about it: what do they want to know? Rework the writing in order to try and answer their questions;

• reread an entry and ask “Where’s the mystery here? What do I wonder about?” write to explore the mysteries and questions;

• talk to someone about the subject of what you have written. Write about it again without looking at what you have already written;

• find a single word or phrase that matters especially in a piece of writing; put it at the top of a blank page and write and write and write with that as your starting point;

• look for connections or patterns through several pages; what is the theme? Write that at the top of a page and use that as the starting point.

Write in the notebook as often as you can. It will become a storehouse of ideas, a map of your journeys, a memory bank, a box of surprises. Enjoy.