Daybooks

Updated July 2008

"Most of what goes into a notebook defies description. Labeling it, well, stuff, is about as close as you can get. If your notebook is like mine, it will fill up with stuff you can't quite live without." - Ralph Fletcher, Breathing In, Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook, Heinemann, 1996.

Writer's notebooks make "K-gray students" feel like the real writers they are. Of course, the notebooks don't work for every one, but I find most kids adopt daybooks enthusiastically. The key is to allow writers to make daybooks their own just as Donald Murray, writer and inventor of the word daybook, modeled for so many of us.

While each teacher may have some non-negotiables, daybooks are different than other notebooks in that (1) students and teachers create them using their own learning style, (2) daybooks can be very messy, disorganized and even unreadable to teachers, and (3) most of us in the UNC-Charlotte Writing Project don't grade them (even though some of us may look at specific pages when necessary).

I invite the students to try a composition notebook to hold all their ideas for writing. (I eventually started asking students to use their daybooks for all subjects but that's an idea that most teachers don't want to try right away.) I provide the first writer's notebook for students who have never tried one and encourage them to experiment. They need something hard-covered so that it can travel back and forth from home to school and stay in good shape. They need a notebook with pages that are difficult to rip out. In fact, I invite the students to leave several pages at the beginning for a Table of Contents and then to number the upper right corner of every page. Numbered pages reinforces the point that each page is important and should stay in the notebook.

A writer's notebook is the drawer students keep with them. Or, as one student put it: "My daybook is my writing scrapbook."

It's a place to collect bits and pieces that will eventually be ideas for or pieces of finished works. In the daybooks, my students store drafting, freewriting, drawings and prewriting. It's the place for writing or gluing lists of things that will help when writing and thinking: topics, words, phrases, favorite lines, advice, settings, character sketches, etc. A writer's notebook is for pasting things: parts of stories, others' stories, poems, pictures, ticket stubs, comics, post cards, and anything else that provides examples of good writing or topics for writing. Students take notes about writing and reading, math and science in the daybook like real learners. (See photo of scientist and his daybook, right.)

In daybooks, writers take risks. They write daily, in class and at home. They may even write badly. No one sees the writing notebook but the author, unless given permission. Writing so much without the fear of criticism helps students exercise their writing muscles privately.

"It seems like ideas are like gossamer, or mist, fragile as a dream, forgotten as soon as you awake," writes Nikki Grimes in Jazmin's Notebook. But with daybooks, papers and ideas don't get scattered and lost. Daybooks or writer's notebooks can bring organization to the writer's life because everything the learner needs is in one place. Even handouts from the teacher can be glued in the notebook.

Daybooks are about brainstorming so that seeds are in place to harvest for finished projects. In order to publish a piece, the author selects a seed to revise and finish. Then the writing goes onto notebook paper or the computer. In the meantime, the notebook is the container to keep everything that helps the writer become a better writer, the reader a better reader, and the thinker a better thinker.

It is through the consistent use of daybooks that ideas are discovered and nurtured with regular freewriting, drafting, observing and collecting both at home and in school. It is there, thinkers reflect. They assess growth and set goals. Students write reflective letters to teachers and use daybooks as evidence of learning. Writers can look back over the pages and see progress.

To read in depth about daybooks, go to my website www.liketoread.com and click on "Newsletters." I spell out my specifics in the issues from September 10, 2006 - January 20, 2007 which you can download and read at your leisure. Also, in the index, you will see a heading, "Daybooks." Click there as well. Recently, six of us from the Charlotte Writing Project wrote a book to explain our successes with daybooks in helping students reflect and grow as learners! Buy it from Heinemann or Amazon.com. (See details in the list of resources, below.)

Other resources to learn more about writer's notebooks and daybooks:

1. OUR BOOK! Brannon, Griffin, Haag, Iannone, Urbanski, Woodward, Thinking Out Loud On Paper: Student Daybooks as a Tool For Learning, Heinemann, 2008.
2. Aimee Buckner, Notebook Know-How, Stenhouse, 2005.
3. Ralph Fletcher, Breathing In, Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook, Heinemann, 1996.
4. Marissa Moss, Amelia's Notebook, Amelia Writes Again, Tricycle Press.
5. JoAnne Rocklin, For Your Eyes Only, Scholastic Books, 1998.
6. Amy Hest, The Private Notebook of Katie Roberts, Scholastic Books, 1995.
7. Ruth Shagoury Hubbard and Karen Ernst, New Entries: Learning by Writing and Drawing, Heinemann, 1997.
8. Pamela Lloyd, How Writers Write, Nelson Publishers, 1987.