How to Use Writing Notebooks in Your Elementary School Classroom

To keep your students engaged and motivated, incorporate writing periods into your weekly schedule. A good way to reinforce this routine is to alternate writing with personal reading time. Depending on student interest and grade level, a writing period may last 10 to 15 minutes or more.

You can also encourage your students to personalize and decorate the cover of their notebook. Remember, you want them to enjoy using it!

At the end of each term, why not ask your students to read their favourite notebook entries to the class?

Although a writing notebook is generally for free writing, teachers are strongly encouraged to give prompts to spark their students’ creativity and help them overcome writer’s block. We recommend offering a maximum of two prompts per writing period to avoid lengthy decision-making.

Once your students are feeling inspired, they should let their imaginations run wild! For an added challenge, ask them to use specific words in their text. The important thing is to stimulate their creativity and allow them to express themselves freely through writing.
 
One way to decide on a daily or weekly prompt is to hold occasional brainstorming sessions. You can also try the following exercises with your class:

• Show your students a photo and ask them to write a text about it. Use a single photo for the whole class or give each student a different one. You can find the image on the internet or in a magazine, or ask your students to draw their own.
• Have students write letters to someone they care about. Alternatively, they can write to a celebrity, an author, a historical or fictional character, etc.
• Ask your students to write a journal entry about their thoughts, feelings, experiences, or dreams.
• Split your students into groups and ask them to write a story together, either by coming to a consensus or taking turns. Another fun option is for them to write a collective story using the exquisite corpse method.
• Ask thought-provoking questions such as “What if you were an animal?”, “What if you were a superhero?”, or “What if you had a magic wand?”
• Use two-noun prompts that pair seemingly unrelated words, such as housefly and shoes or dinosaur and motorcycle, to inspire students to write a silly story.
• Ask your students to write a short story in any genre (e.g., adventure, crime, fantasy, science fiction, romance).
• Provide an excerpt from a text or newspaper article and ask your students to make changes (e.g., remove all negations, change the verb tenses) that will alter its meaning.

A writing notebook can be an effective tool for practising literary criticism. By juxtaposing reading and writing periods, you can encourage your students to write argumentative texts to share their thoughts about a book they just read. We also highly recommend using our Alloprof reading passports, which students can personalize with drawings and stickers. 

Check out our recommended reading list to find books organized by interest, grade, and topic. Also, why not encourage your students to play Book of Spells, our reading comprehension game, and evaluate the texts according to specific criteria? Book of Spells is a goldmine of children’s stories! By correctly answering reading comprehension questions, students earn resources to take care of an adorable little monster.

Knowing that their notebook will not usually be marked might throw some students off at first. However, we do recommend that you provide feedback to keep your students motivated and help them improve their writing skills. Once they realize that their mistakes are not the focus, writing will become more fun. Feedback is an essential part of academic success, as it keeps students engaged and helps them excel.

Of course, not all notebook entries need to be read and commented on. Students can mark certain entries with a star or special symbol to indicate that they want feedback from their teacher or classmates.

A great way to nurture peer-to-peer feedback is by creating writing circles. In small teams, students can share their writing, offer suggestions for improvement, and make corrections. This practice promotes autonomy and the integration of the three basic language competencies: speaking, writing, and reading.