Creating Your Writer's Workshop Notebook

The most important items to bring to class with you every day = your Writer's Workshop Notebook & pen/pencil.

Your Writer's Workshop Notebook (WWN) is where you will keep all of your ideas, organize your writing, take notes to look back at later, and mostly- WRITE! The longest portion of class time will be writing time, so you will be really lost without it. You get to create the cover for your notebook so it is a reflection of you- what you like to do, eat, say, wear, play- anything that tells about who you are. Here's how to do it:

Instructions for Setting Up Your WWN

Materials Needed:
Notebook 

Magazines

Scissors
Foam stickers/letters
Fun duct tape 
Colored sticky notes
Wide clear tape 

Instructions

Front and back cover art:

1. Clip out pictures and/or quotes from magazines that represent you and things you like. Minimum of one picture and one quote and your name.
   
2. Arrange them on the front and back of your notebook however you wish. You may cover all of the notebook, or just choose a few things to put on it- totally up to you! 
3. Apply wide clear tape over the notebook to keep the pictures/quotes in place.
   
4.  Clean up your area after you are done. 

Page numbers and labeling sections:

1. Number all of the pages in your notebook (front and back of each page).
2. Label the top of the notebook pages as follows:

• pg 1 Table of Contents
• pg 3 Mini-Lesson Notes
  
• pg 55 Writing

Creating section tabs:

1. On a sticky note, write the name for each section (above) on each side of the sticky note. You can color code the sections as you wish. 
2. Lay the sticky note on the edge of the page for each section. Adjust the sticky notes so you can read each one (see image above for reference). You may want to cut them to make them fit better. Once you have them where you want them, wrap them with wide clear tape to make them more sturdy and ensure they will stay in place.

A Start-Up File for Writer's Workshop

The Value of Creating a WWN