Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook pack: A Workshop Essential

by Linda Rief

With the generosity, thoughtfulness, and practicality we have come to appreciate from this extraordinary classroom teacher, Linda gives us the structures and models we need to invite every student we teach to think and act as a reader, writer, and artist. -Nancie Atwell Many teachers wonder how to juggle a writer's notebook and a reader's response log. Linda Rief ingeniously combines them both in the Writer's-Readers's Notebook. This veteran teacher truly walks the walk; she shows exactly how to make this powerful tool work in the classroom. -Ralph Fletcher The Readers-Writers Notebook is THE tool for all those concerned with adolescents and literacy. -Teri Lesesne Author of Naked Reading The Writer's-Reader's Notebook is the most essential learning and teaching tool in Linda Rief's classroom. More than an empty journal, it's a highly structured, specifically designed place where all students (English language learners, those with learning differences, girls and boys) connect reading, writing, and thinking. It's also where Linda can observe and encourage their learning. Now, in Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook ,Linda shows you how this key resource in her English/language arts workshop has the power to help learners develop into articulate, literate citizens of the world. In Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook Linda guides you through the Writer's-Reader's what's in it, why it's in there, and how to use it effectively with your students. She shows you how to use it to assess what students know, how they think, and how they can express themselves as writers and readers. Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook With a copy of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook and vital insights into its effectiveness, Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook includes everything you need to implement the Writer's-Reader's Notebook in any class and to help students begin the journey toward more thoughtful, purposeful literacy experiences. Read it and see why the Notebook should be at the center of your teaching.

Purchase 5-packs of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook

Genres: Professional Development, Writing, Education

360 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2007

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

My expectations for student writing notebooks have evolved over time. A writing notebook is a place for writers to react, to collect beautiful words and phrases, to write beside poems, articles, and excerpts from powerful books. Linda's amazing examples, both from her own notebook and her students', celebrate the possibilities that exist when students fill their notebook pages with responses to their reading, to quick writes, and to whole-class texts. I'm so glad I returned to this book because I noticed things I didn't see before. Powerful book for educators.

[Briana Cleveland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book accompanies Rief's consumable writer's/reader's notebook, so the first quarter of this book is a user guide for her notebook product. If you are not planning on using her consumable notebooks with your students, you'll still find a few ideas that you could apply to whatever notebook your students are using.

However, the rest of the text, and the most useful aspect of this text, is comprised entirely of real student notebook samples. These samples are an amazing teaching resource. A teacher could use the responses as a resource for identifying teaching points and/or use the examples for modeling. Gathering and keeping track of student work, especially student notebook work, to use in later teaching can be daunting, but this text has already done that work for you!

I've rated this book a four even though I don't find Rief's insights about notebooks to be revolutionary, however, I do find the samples of student work to be incredibly valuable.

[Rebecca R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but I didn’t like that the majority of it was student writing samples with no prompts included. The footnote says what the student is responding to, but I would like to see the instructions given or prompts for writing. It was helpful to have a few samples that I could see what kind of feedback she gave, but I did not feel like I needed that many. I ended up skimming most.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This came bundled with a journal which Heinemann also sells, explaining the steep price point for a thin-ish book. If you're thinking about using writer's/reader's notebooks, this will be helpful: Rief explains her thinking and offers many pages of student samples. This won't show you how to teach writing workshop, but it will shine some light in one darker corner. Since Rief is a middle school teacher, the examples skew to that end of the spectrum, but there are a good quantity of them.

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my classroom research and thesis.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential!