Writer's Workshop Part 2

Well so much for blogging daily during the girls naps! One goes down, I spend a little time with the other one, put her down, and the 1st wakes up.  Get her down again, and the 2nd wakes up.  So here I am, hoping I can type this in about the 5 minute span I probably have before one wakes up!

In my last post I said I would talk about writing folders and notebooks.  I wish I had pictures, but since I went out on maternity leave and missed the last few weeks of school, I left them all there :(  So try to use your imagination!!

I bought 5 different colors of 3-pronged folders (a class set) and the same colors of folders without prongs, but were already hole punched.  I turned the flat folder inside out, and then inserted it into the 3-pronged folder.  I taped the flat folder together with duct tape, and labeled the sections blank paper, draft, ready to revise/edit, and final.  The students wrote in their notebooks everyday (I'll show you that setup in a minute), and then we chose one to take thru the writing process to publish.  In all honesty though, a regular 2 pocket folder would've been fine.  Half of the time Most of the time students didn't put their paper in the correct pocket, and it drove me crazy way more than them.  They knew where they were in the process and didn't need 4 different pockets to help them.  So this year, 2 pocket folders it is!

The notebook was a better idea.  I got this idea from Pinterest, but it came to this blog Apples of Your Eye! 

All of the writing teachers 3-5 decided we wanted to follow this setup.  I liked how it had their writing ideas at the beginning for them to refer back to, and a table of contents to be able to find their writings.  Surprisingly, they really kept that up!  But now that I've used this setup for a year, I plan to make a few changes.  For one, I think I will organize it by Narrative, Opinion and Informational.  I will still have them put their writing notes in the notebook, but under the category that it refers to.  I think it will help with their understanding better, and they can flip straight to that section and have everything about Narratives together. I will update once I get back into the classroom as to how well I think that is going!

What about you...how do you organize your writer's notebooks?