Teach Writing Right

...was totally amazing.  Admittedly, I was a bit cynical when I was told the trip would be happening, and that I would be chaperoning and that it would be overnight!  Mostly, I hated the idea of writing two days' worth of sub plans for my seventh and eighth graders who stayed back in town.

Upon arriving at camp, I completely changed my tune.  It was a fantastic experience that I would not have missed.  My kids showed great teamwork skills, they displayed a level of maturity that--when compared to the other schools' sixth graders who attended--was so clearly evident, and they had a blast.

Waiting patiently for their next team activity!

The experience gave them so much to write about in their writer's notebooks that that's all we did Friday.  While they worked on their writing, I composed the following poem about those nine sixth-grade gentlemen whom I shared my cabin with.  As the adult, I had my own door-less room in that tiny cabin, and I could hear every whisper they exchanged.  Sixth grade boys are delightful when they gossip and share secrets, especially when they think I can't hear them because I'm reading a book just 15 yards from the .  The "Cabin Oath" they swore to obey as they agreed shared their secrets was one of the cutest things I've ever eavesdropped on.  When they saw my poem was called "The Cabin Oath," their little eyes widened so much, and they looked terrified when they realized I'd heard their quiet chatting of the night before.

As you can see from my poem below, they had nothing to worry about; I am a good secret keeper.  I'm not sure if this poem is still in draft form, or if it needs a few more revisions.  I'm going to let it "gestate" for a week (which I always encourage my kids to do too between our weekly writing workshops!) and decide if there needs to be another draft.  Here's what I have so far though.

"The Cabin Oath" by Mr. Harrison

Our March Writer's Notebook Bingo Cards "Center-Square Lesson" was entitled "Rhyming Slogans Across the Curriculum."  I quickly discovered which of my students rhyme easily and which students can hardly rhyme to save their lives.  All in all, it was a fun month though...even for those who struggled.

I just published ten fun examples from (mostly) my seventh grader's notebooks.  I'm not sure why the sixth and eighth graders' pages were so "less than stellar," but they were.  I've challenged them to outshine every seventh grader with April's notebook challenge.

Please feel free to visit my Rhyming Slogans Across the Curriculum Student Samples Page to see the wonderful work my students do.  Next year, to have my notebook and ten pages from these students to show next year's students...well, I can hardly wait to teach this lesson again next spring; the more samples you have to share, I have found, the better off the lesson is.  I believe this whole-heartedly.

Here is one of my favorite samples, from my wonderful student, Wonje:

--Corbett

Had a rough couple of weeks with my newly-diagnosed diabetic dog, Pudge.  I told my students--during the time he was at the vet and we weren't sure he was going to live or see again after finding him in a diabetic coma--that I wanted to write only good memories about him in my notebook--that I wasn't ready to write sad things.

Anyway, I ended up revising my entire "Song Parody" lesson online based on two pages I recently added to my own notebook.  Not surprising, one of the new pages is a song parody about my wife and I having to give him twice-daily insulin shots and blood tests.

I believe in teachers keeping writer's notebooks to show their students.  My students were very much inspired by my two new pages over the past few weeks.  Here's one of them:

Only had a few students take me up on January's ANAGRAM CHALLENGE for their writer's notebook.  They loved the mentor text so much, but only a few went online to explore their own anagrams.

This month the challenge is based on creating ORIGINAL SUPERHEROES, and I already have numerous students well under way with the first half of the task.

Check out this book at Amazon by clicking here.

If I were to rate this month's Superhero lesson against my other lessons, I think this one is pretty strong based on two of my seven elements.  The mentor text (Superhero ABC's) is wonderful, and I found a bonus way to use it this last week during 7th grade enrichment, which piqued their interest in the writing assignment more.  We actually diagrammed four or five sentences from the book when I spotted they needed a review of diagramming.


Secondly, my teacher model from my own notebook really grabbed their attention; this lesson has two different notebook pages to create, and it was the first one that seized them.  I am hoping the second one does the same.  Not sure what it is about superheroes that grabs my kiddos' attention, but it does. 

--Corbett

I always had a great time playing with words as a kid, so I experienced fond memories of my childhood this week-end, creating a new teacher-model page in my writer's notebook.  As you probably know if you follow my work, each month I challenge my Gifted & Talented students (I have quite a few this year) and all other students who may be interested in with a special GT Writer's Notebook Challenge of the Month.

My students know how to find my website, and they know where I store these monthly challenges.  They also know that each month I place the "mentor text" that inspired the lesson near my desk, and they can look through the book any time. At the end of the month, students who independently have completed the challenge show it to me for extra credit points and a prize (a comic book or a smencil is what I've offered to them this year).

We were talking about anagrams earlier this month, inspired by the fact that my eighth graders are reading Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, Jr., and that the movie version of the book is called October Sky--which is an anagram of the original title.  Anyway, my kids became really excited about the notion of making anagrams for their own names and for the names of friends.

I thought anagrams might be an interesting challenge for the next writer's notebook challenge.  After searching for mentor texts on the topic, I discovered a new author/cartoonist: Jon Agee.  He has books on oxymorons, palindromes, and anagrams!  Last week, my new mentor text on anagrams--Elvis Lives! and Other Anagrams came in the mail, and my students went crazy over it.

Saturday morning, I sat down and created a model notebook page on "Personal Anagrams" that I will be showing my students this week--prepping them to think about anagrams while they are away from school over the next few weeks.  Below is the page, which I think turned out great.  I also have the entire lesson write-up for this task completed, and you can access it by clicking here.


Hope you're inspired to anagram too!

--Corbett

For those of you using our Writer's Notebook Bingo Cards, you know our "center square lesson of the month" for October was our "Life is a Recipe" metaphors.  My students each created a two-page spread in their notebooks; on the left-hand side, they created a personal recipe metaphor; on the right-hand side, they created--in my class--a science-related metaphor.  As of November 1st, I began checking my students' notebooks for these two recipes, and I am astounded at the quality of thought many of my students gave me while competing this project.

Here, by the way, is my teacher example from my own notebook that I shared with them throughout this month-long writing process.

Since beginning this assignment, I even have a few students who have begun creating recipe metaphors beyond the two required recipes my assignment asked for.  I look forward to seeing how these students' extra recipe metaphors will guide them to creating rough drafts for future assignments during upcoming writer's workshop time.

Below is 8th-grader, Alex's, two-page "recipe metaphor" spread; click on it to see it with more detail.  If you click here, you can see several more great examples from my classroom of amazing students, as well as the whole assignment that inspired these samples!

I hope this inspires you to think of "recipe metaphors" that you can share with your own amazing student writers.

--Corbett

We're still working on our "Life is a Cookbook" pages in our writer's notebooks (since it's the "center square lesson on our October Bingo Card).  In the last two weeks, I have photographed and added two student samples that did fun things--I thought--with "Mr. Stick," our writer's notebook "Margin Mascot."   My goal is to post a sample every week from (hopefully) a different student so that by year's end, I have 30+ great Mr. Stick samples in the on-line gallery I have set up.  Just having the page up and showing it to kids each week (plus awarding chosen students a special "Mr. Stick Badge" I created for my classroom Edmodo site) is proving to be a great motivator for my students.

Here is Sarah's personal recipe, which I posted last week:

Here is Ian's example from this week:


Take a look at the whole on-line gallery I've collected so far.  I think is going to be a pretty special page at my website when all is said, drawn, and done.

--Corbett

Highly recommended!

In addition to buying over 75 titles myself, I asked for donations of used books (appropriate for my 6th-8th graders) at the beginning of the year in a letter to my new parents...amazingly, I now have two book-carts full of novelsthat my students can directly check out from the back of my classroom.  They can also put holds on books that I have limited copies of.  I thought--for sure--The Hunger Games would be the most sought after title on the hold lists, but it has become Neil Shusterman's Unwind; perhaps the fact that I have been talking about it almost daily in most of my classes, telling my students what a great summer read it was for me (to provide a model of how you talk about a book if trying to persuade others) probably helped.  I am determined to host a "Community of Readers" among my students this year, teaching them how to convince each other to read books they've really enjoyed.

Two weeks in to the new school year, and I have been establishing regular routines that will contribute to my writer's and reader's workshop.  I am pretty close to being ready to explain how these two types of workshops will work to my students and their parents.  I never like to announce how our in-class workshops work too early in the year--not before I've established and we've practiced some of the foundational practices.

I humbly think I am an old-pro at the Writer's Workshop.  The Reading Workshop is new to me this year.  I have officially decided that Accelerated Reader is not a program I can support anymore; dangling points in front of students as incentive to read no longer fits my project-based teaching style.

I am going to be expecting my students to find an independent novel they like once a month and have it read in three weeks.  During the fourth week of each month, they will be expected to complete a project that does two things:

1. Prove to me they've read the book (without taking an AR quiz);
2. Convince another student to read the book through an effort they take related to the book.

By the end of the year, I want to have 20-30 project options available to my students; at present, I have created six ideas that I really like.  I like them because they are all designed to be seen by a larger audience than just me--their teacher--and most push persuasive writing skills.

Here are my first six project ideas: 

• Persuasive book review: (not a book report--I hate reading those!) type a 300-word, thoughtful write-up that shares both the strengths and any criticisms of the novel without giving away the book’s entire plot to someone who hasn't read it yet.   The goal of a review is to convince another student to read (or not read) the book.  Students who do A-work on this task may also submit these reviews to their writing portfolios, provided they are willing to conference with their teacher about it and create one more revision of the review based on their teacher’s feedback.
• Compose a thoughtful letter to the author: research how to contact a living author of the book you’ve read and write a polished, one-page letter to him/her, both praising the work and asking an intelligent question about the author’s writing process.  Any student who receives an actual letter back from the author (not the publisher or an agent) will be excused from one future reading workshop project provided they allow Mr. Harrison to publish both correspondences at his website.  (This one is inspired by this page at my wife's website.
• Create/post a webpage-tribute to the book or to its main character:  contribute to our class’s online collection of tributes to books we have read during reading workshop with a thoughtful webpage.  These online tributes can be story-based, setting-based, or based on a main character (like a fictional character’s imaginary Facebook page).  Because these tributes will potentially be seen by thousands of educators and students, final products must be thoughtful and error-free. 
• Novel-inspired board game: design board game or strategy game based on the novel’s plot; if another student were to play this game, they would completely understand the premise of the novel and be interested in actually reading it.  All of the game’s required “pieces” will be designed by the student, and how-to-instructions for playing the game must accompany this project.  Students will be required to supervise 2-4 other students as they play the game during lunchtime or after school in Mr. Harrison’s classroom.
• Pamphlet campaign: obtain permission from a librarian/teacher (not Mr. Harrison) to begin a “You-should-really-check-out-this-book” campaign.  After designing a tri-fold pamphlet, students will publish 25+ copies of it and design a distribution method that puts their pamphlet into the hands of students genuinely interested in reading the book they have chosen.  Sending the pamphlet to the author/publisher and receiving a favorable response will excuse the student from a future Reading Workshop Project.
• Create/Cast/Market a live or video performance inspired by the novel:  write play or other type of performance that would inspire fellow students to check out the book after watching it.  The performance will be scheduled in Mr. Harrison’s classroom at lunchtime or after school, and students must “market” their performance successfully so that 10+ fellow students come and watch it.   This project can be completed together by 2-5 students who have all recently read the same novel.

I am working on a teacher model now for each project suggestion; I will post my teacher models as soon as they are completed.  If you have any feedback or ideas for additional projects, I'd love to hear from you! 

--Corbett

I'm going to make it my personal  "Friday Practice" to always sketch and photograph the next week's (Mr. Stick-inspired) Metaphor of the Week before I leave for the weekend.

We've spent the first week of school pre-writing and planning our writers' notebooks introductory pages.  My sixth graders are working on a page dedicated to their personal treasures; my seventh and eighth graders are creating showing riddles, inspired by WritingFix's Lesson of the Month for September.  Can't even begin to tell you how much easier it is to inspire my kids because I can show them my teacher-model of a writer's notebook page before I send them into the pre-writing process.

I've decided next week's Metaphor of the Week will be : "A Writer's Notebook is a Personal Treasure Chest."  Next week, we'll be reading the forward to Ralph Fletcher's A Writer's Notebook: Unlocking the Writer in You, and it will mesh nicely with this metaphor.

Here is the display my students will see as they file in after their Labor Day weekend.  Click on the image to see it in larger form.

Again, if you have ideas for good metaphors about learning, life, and tools of learning, I hope you'll share them with me.

Back from vacation!  Time to get serious about my new classroom!  I'll have a brand new set of 6-8th graders joining me at the end of this month, and I need to excite them about the reader's and writer's workshops I'll be guiding them through.

I have three bulletin boards in my new classroom.  The next three posts will share what I'm planning to put on them!

The bulletin board closest to my desk will share some "back history" about me as a reader, so they can have an idea of what it means to have a "reading portfolio."  I racked my brain in June to remember what my favorite books were back when I was in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade; I decided to rack it even harder and think about 5th grade and 9th grade too.  I am creating a 4' x 4' bulletin board called "MR. H's READING PORTFOLIO."  It will share cover art and personal memories of the books from those years that had the most impact on me as a blossoming reader.  I will be expecting my students to read independently this year, and at the end of each year be able to discuss which new books they've read that have had the most impact on them.  Perhaps they'll write about/discuss the novels we read as a whole class, but I'll be more pleased if they find their independent novel choices the source of their inspiration.  I want my bulletin board to help them see that I expect them to seek independent novels.

So...here are links to my five mini-posters that will decorate my "MR. H's READING PORTFOLIO" bulletin board.

• My favorite books from fifth grade poster
• My favorite books from sixth grade poster
• My favorite book from seventh grade poster
• My favorite book from eighth grade poster
• My favorite book from ninth grade poster

Questions? Comments?  I'd love to hear from you. 

Next stop: creating my "TRAIT OF THE MONTH" bulletin board for September!  I will post pictures soon!

--Corbett

It's Friday!  Spent the last week not only enjoying some time in the garden but also revising on two more of my writer's notebook lessons that will promote Writing Across the Curriculum in my new classroom next year.  As always, my inspiration came from building teacher-models of the lessons I'll be asking my students to participate in. 


The Common Core State Standards--rolling out K-8 next year here in Northern Nevada--have a Writing Across the Curriculum Element that I have been taking very seriously.  I hear teachers de-cry that the CCSS will take away our teachers' ability to be creative, but I disagree.  I worked very hard to make these two new lessons all about my creativity, and I hope they inspire you to be even more creative next year.

The first  lesson I revised on this week was "Rhyming Couplets Across the Curriculum" lesson, which has students creating rhyming lines about newly learned content.  Here's my new teacher-model for this revised lesson:

Click here to access this writer's notebook lesson on-line at my website!

My second lesson this week was "Extending Metaphors across the Curriculum."  It has students establish and extend on content-based metaphors.  Here is the new teacher-model I added to this revised lesson:

Click here to access this writer's notebook lesson on-line at my website:

 These are newly revised lessons!  As always I welcome feedback before these lessons become finalized this September.  I hope your summers continue to be marvelous.  More W.A.C. lessons coming next week!

--Corbett

Wow!  I have been put on an amazing middle school team next year; come late August, I'll be teaching language arts (6th-8th grade), while the three other teachers of my team will be teaching the science, math, and history to the same group.  We will have these kids for three years, which I think is an amazing way to teach, especially when I think of the high-quality teaching that I know will come from the classrooms of  Kelly, Holly, and Sue--my three brand new colleagues next year.  I seriously am in a "dream teaching situation" next year.

One of our team's goals is for our students to maintain separate notebooks/learning logs for all four of their core classes.  With all the writer's notebook materials that I've been developing over the past three years, my kids and I will be set with this requirement in English class, but I know content-based notebooks (kept in the style and spirit of Ralph Fletcher) will be a fairly new concept for my teaching teammates.

In science, math, and social studies, you want students' notebooks to be a place where they can a) summarize content-based learning in their own words (no regurgitation!) and b) reflect on that content morally, ethically, and/or creatively--through a combination of visuals and words.

I am, therefore, working on some brand new writing across the curriculum challenges that I can establish/teach in language arts class so that my teaching teammates--once I've given the kids the format--can then start requiring the same students to use the same format with their different content.

Just finished a new one!  "16-word poems" inspired by William Carlos Williams' famous poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow."  You can read my whole lesson (still kind of in draft form) on-line here: http://corbettharrison.com/lessons/so-much-depends-upon.htm

What I'm doing differently now, knowing that I have these three amazing colleagues, is I am making sure I have teacher models of notebook pages that reflect all four core areas.  This way, my students--in Language Arts--will have already tried my writing challenges with the content of my colleagues' classes before leaving my class.

Here is the "Writing Across the Curriculum"-inspired teacher model that goes with my 16-word poem assignment.  This is a new concept for me to plan for.  I am actually having a great time thinking/planning this way!

Click here for the whole lesson write-up.

It probably sounds sick to say this, being that it's July 15th: I can hardly wait for the new school year to start!

--Corbett

I've been looking for an assignment (other than Heart Maps) to launch my writer's notebook program and to give students ownership of their notebooks' ideas.  I finally found a mentor text that inspired a new assignment: Written Anything Good Lately? by Susan Allan and Janet Lindaman.  This simple little alphabet book provides --from A to Z--a variety of writing genre possibilities.  After sharing these authors' alpha-genre list, I've decided I want my students to create one of their own.

Their alpha-genre prompt will be: "Come up with 26 different things you'd be willing to write this year.  Sky's the limit.  Let your creativity fly!  Make sure you only list things you actually have an interest in writing!"

It probably won't surprise you to know that I'm going to base the success of my own lesson on the teacher model I provide.  My teacher model is below.  I am also working with a friend's seventh grade child this summer--Austin--and he'll be creating a model of this notebook page I'll be posting at my online version of this lesson too.

Click here to access my complete online lesson that inspired the above model.

I hope you like this idea enough to say, "I should make my own teacher model of that assignment, so I can show it to my students this Fall."

--Corbett

It's kind of official!  I am heading back to the classroom next year.  Needed to say "Goodbye" to my previous workplace (a teacher training center) because the work became about politics and keeping superintendents happy--not about what's good for teachers.

So...I am crazily working on writer's notebook pages this summer--going to make my writer's workshop all about what begins in the writer's notebook next year.

Here is a fun page I plan to introduce early on to my students; I especially like how the page is not only teaching unqiue ideas, but it's focused on teaching students what a noun phrase is!  We don't teach enough grammar in places other than worksheets and daily oral language drills.  That's the dogma I head back to my students with.

Here is the complete lesson online that sets students up to create this notebook page in their own notebooks.

More to come...all summer long!

--Corbett

At the final training of the year at one of my focus schools last week, I challenged my fellow educators with this: "This summer, consider starting your own writer's notebook that you can show your students next fall."   I showed them some new pages I'd recently added to my own writer's notebook (which I just started this year and which I had been showing them all year).

About the challenge, I got a lot of "Yeah, right" looks from the majority of the teachers, but at the end of that final workshop, several (less than 10%) came up to me and told me of their intentions to do just that...to start their first writer's notebooks.

I spent this whole year diligently challenging teachers to share their own writing with their students more.  Share their notebooks, share their rough drafts, share their revision strategies, share their final drafts...just share something.   "You'll see a whole new energy about writing from your students if you do this," I assured them, citing my own past experience.

I get it--the resistance from teachers--and yet I kind of don't.  We share our reading strategies with our students.  We share or problem solving thinking when we work on math.  Why are we so resistant to sharing our writing process?  How messed up did our own schooling make us that we're so afraid of showing our own writing to a bunch of kids who--more likely than not--look up to us? 

PLEASE...a final plea as my hair turns a bit more gray based on teachers' general unwillingness to do this...PLEASE...change your practices and include yourself in the writing process more next year.  PLEASE.

Start a writer's notebook this summer.  Just get a few pages done that you can show your students in the fall.

My final writer's notebook challenge for the summer is for teachers...teachers whom I hope will start their own notebooks this summer.  Students can do this one too, but I'm talking to teachers today!

Here's the notebook challenge:  think of three favorite toys from your own childhood or that belong to your own children.  Create a page that shares the "thinking" you think those toys would do if they were accidentally lost.  What would those toys' voices sounds like?  What would they say to their missing owners?  Where would they be lost?  Here is my notebook page based on this simple prompt; it contains both images and words to inspire me to write more:

We have a whole WritingFix assignment that takes this thought, develops it, and challenges students to create a poem.  Click here to access WritingFix's "Little Lost Toy" Poems.  I believe this to be a fantastic lesson to start your students writing next year; certainly, it's better than "Write about what you did this summer."  I believe any teacher who shows off his/her own notebook page to motivate students' thinking will have an amazingly better degree of success with this lesson.  And with most every other lesson.

Writer's Notebooks, I have learned, increase students' quality of thinking during pre-writing.  There's no better time to make a teacher notebook model than during the summer. 

PLEASE...let's do this.

--Corbett

If you've successfully inspired your students to keep writer's notebooks this year, then now is the time to plant "seeds" in your writers' minds that will keep them working in those notebooks over the summer.  This is the first of three Notebook Summer Challenges for you (from me) to share with your students.

Now I am a lover of language!  Palindromes and oxymorons excite the tar out of me.  I also believe puns to be fantastic.  I have devoted full pages in my writer's notebooks to these topics, and when I hear (or make-up) a new pun, palindrome, or oxymoron in my daily work, I know I have a place to record them.

The other day, I came up with a brand new palindrome: Exam axe...you know, that's the axe they give novice firefighters when they take the "break the burning door down" test as they're testing to become full-fledged firemen.  My brain works in this crazy way, and I am glad to have a place in my writer's notebook to record them. 

My Summer Notebook Challenge #1 is based on a language pun that I love: Tom Swiftie jokes.   Inspired by the writing style of Victor Appleton, author of the Tom Swift adventure books from long ago, this is when you write a dialogue sentence with a dialogue verb (said, reply, etc.) that sits next to an adverb.  The goal is to make what's said in quotes pun off the adverb.  For example, here are two of my favorite Tom Swiftie puns:

• "I've only got spades, diamonds, and clubs," Tom said heartlessly.
• "I'm wearing my wedding ring now," Tom said with abandon.

I have a whole lesson on Tom Swifties posted at WritingFix; it shares the whole history of this type of pun, which I first discovered on the "Grin and Bear It" joke page found in every issue of my Boy's Life Magazine from my youth.  You can access the whole lesson here:  http://writingfix.com/Chapter_Book_Prompts/tomswift1.htm

Over the summer, I encourage my students to read their books with a "Tom Swiftie" eye for punning, which means they're looking for lines of dialogue with interesting adverbs attached to the speaking verb.  For example, they might find in a book they're reading the following line of dialogue:

• "I don't think I can stand," Ariel said weakly.

If they see a punning possibility with the adverb weakly, they can create a Tom Swiftie joke.  They have to change the character name and what's said in quotes, and that might lead to several possibilities.  Here are two from me:

• "It's Sunday.  Here we go again," Tom said weakly.
• "Why do I always become ill on Tuesdays," Tom said weakly.

Tom Swifties are certainly not for every student, but I'll bet you have kids excited about their notebooks who will find this to be a great challenge for the summer..as long as you model the process and show them a Tom Swiftie notebook page (yours or mine below).  Have your interested students dedicate a page in their notebooks to this topic, and as they read, challenge them to create these types of jokes.  On their notebook page(s) they can record their best ones and illustrate them.

Here is my Tom Swiftie page from my notebook; click the image to see it in larger form:

If you click on the image and print, it should print out the size of a full notebook page!

As part of WritingFix's "Year of Writer's Notebooks," all our monthly lessons and monthly prompts have come with Writer's Notebook suggestions and models.

Not surprisingly, as the year comes to a close, I am having a little more trouble than usual  finding teachers who have time to create the notebook pages that we've been featuring.  And so...I resigned myself this weekend to create two notebook pages in my own notebook for May's upcoming lesson and prompt.

My first notebook page (at right) is a pre-writing exercise to go with what-will-be May's featured lesson of the month, Don't Eat Me Monologues, which is inspired by Steven L. Layne's hysterical picture book, My Brother Dan's Delicious.  I decided it would be a fun task for pre-writing to have students create rhyming slogans that they (or the main character from the text) might say out loud to the monster that the book's character is trying to convince not to eat them.  I started with "Please refrain from eating my brain," and then I let a whole page of slogans happen between Friday and Sunday.  Click here to see the full-sized notebook page I created in honor of this online lesson at WritingFix.  It kind of speaks to my odd sense of humor.  Can't wait to see how it inspires my students who appreciate writing tasks wih a sense of humor.

My second notebook page is a pre-writing exercise for one of WritingFix's oldest prompts; way back in 2002, my NNWP Colleague, Brian Crosby, wrote up one of his favorite prompts for his students-- A Day as you Shoes--and he let us post it at WritingFix.  The prompt has students personify their shoes, then tell their shoes' daily story using voice.  I created a writer's notebook page for this lesson this weekend, asking myself the question, "What funny comic strip might I create about the life of my personified favorite pair of shoes?"  I added to Brian's lesson the idea that several days before writing the shoe perspective story, they should create this type of four-paneled comic strip as a way of pre-writing for the bigger assignment to come.  Now, I am no artist; but I think I did a competent job with this notebook page.  Click here to see a full-sized page version of my new notebook page.  You don't have to be an artist to create a comic strip that might inspire future writing!

I started this year with no writer's notebook of my own.  I am ending this year with a 40-page writer's notebook model that I can share with my students.  I know--without a doubt--I will inspire better writer's notebooks from my students next year--thanks to the fact that I have one I can show them.  Teacher models take time, but they are worth their weight in gold!

--Corbett