When I first started teaching, my coworkers told me to give every student a composition book for writing. I was a new teacher and just soaking up the advice of others- so I did exactly what they said. And it was a disaster!
Kids would start a story and then do an assigned writing prompt on the next page. The following day, they would want to finish their original story but have to put it in another area of their notebook. They skipped pages and couldn't find what they were working on. The unorganized notebooks were contributing (in part) to my students' unorganized writing.
As I prepared for my 2nd year of teaching, I new I had to make some big changes. Binders were the solution that I came up with! Every student had a binder with divider pages for the steps in the writing process. I slipped the divider pages into clear page protectors.
Students use a lose leaf paper. They move their paper from divider to divider as they work through the writing process. For example, when they are done drafting, they can move the entire story over to the editing and revising divider.
When we have to stop writing for the day, they put their piece behind the correct divider and it makes it easy to come back to the next day. The unintended benefit to this great organizational system is that it helped my students to thoroughly understand the writing process! Score!
My students don't have room for another binder in their desk. I bought a wire rack to hold the binders. Student numbers are placed on the spine to make it easy for them to find their binder.
Love this! Writing is such an essential skill, yet so many teachers (myself included!) struggle to do a good job of teaching it. This is a great system that you have created! Do you also have a process for how you meet with students throughout the process?
ReplyDeleteJulie
TheHipTeacher