Explanation and Purpose
Over two decades of homeschooling, using a variety of language arts curriculum, I have never encountered a program that included the use of a writer’s notebook. This is unfortunate. Knowing what I do now about encouraging a writer to explore the art, to find his voice, and to live a writer’s life, I think the writer’s notebook is a missing link. If there were one thing I could go back and do differently with my older children, it would be to teach them the benefits of keeping writer’s notebook.
“The purpose of a notebook is to provide a place for students to practice writing. It’s a place for them to generate text, find ideas, and practice what they know about spelling and grammar.”
Aimee Buckner
Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer’s Notebook
The need to practice writing makes perfect sense. Writing is a skill students learn. Completing assignments for writing curriculum isn’t practice time. We expect our children to be at peak performance level when they write to meet assignment requirements.
Picture the ten-year old boy whose parents sign him up for baseball. Come Saturday, he's ready in the uniform and hat, socks and cleats. Dressed pristine clean, he looks like a champ. Grandparents are in the stands, eager to see the young boy shine. But every time he goes up to bat, he strikes out. Bewildered, the parents question the coach, “Why isn’t our son a better baseball player? We bought all the equipment, helped him get dressed this morning, and gave him a pep talk, what gives?”
The coach answers bluntly, “He didn’t come to practice all week.”
Writing takes a lot of practice.
The most common concerns I hear when talking with parents about writing is that despite the expensive writing curriculum they purchase, nothing changes year to year. Writing assignments are "game on." Using writing curriculum, but not a writer's notebook is like the boy showing up at the game having never put in the hours playing catch with Dad in the backyard.
A writer’s notebook gives the child opportunity to learn what Aimee Buckner calls fluency. “The ability to generate text – a lot of it – in a short period of time.” A writer’s notebook isn’t something that you "get," like a light bulb going off. Buckner states, “Keeping a notebook is a process.”
Stephanie Gavin, Gifted Specialist at Hixson Middle School in the Webster Groves School District, St. Louis, Missouri remembers when students kept writers' notebooks at school. It was a very open ended process, “where students wrote a lot, more than we could read as teachers, and by doing that they found voice and creativity. It was a natural process; writing was strong. The student would then select certain pieces or ideas to revise and edit through workshops.”
Writer’s notebooks are the ideal backbone for the homeschool writing experience.
