Reading Workshop- Notebook Connections

Have you read Notebook Connections Strategies for the Reader's Notebook by Aimee Buckner?
It is a MUST READ!!!

I am currently reading it (amongst many other professional resources) and am LOVING it!

I want to share with you some of the great things I have learned just in the first chapter.

Chapter 1- Reading, Writing, and Harvesting Hope

This chapter, at first, talks about the bridge between reading and writing.
This is SO true!

"The reading-writing connection is a bridge of understanding that helps the reader write more reflectively about his or her reading and the writer write more purposefully for his or her reader.  Taking time to focus on this bridge gives students the opportunity to think both as a reader and a writer."

- Aimee Buckner

In a writer's notebook, students can collect their ideas and thoughts about what they are writing.

In a reader's notebook, students can collect their ideas and thoughts about other people's writing.

Aimee was looking for a way to challenge her students to really think while reading.
But more than that, she wants them to think beyond reading...
To become lifelong readers and writers.
She decided notebooks was the perfect way to take this "from hope to reality".

Why Notebooks?

Here's what Aimee has to say:
- It is a tool which can capture student thinking and understanding of the text.
- It allows students to generate and elaborate on responses to text.
- It is a book of strategies students can rely on- from book to book, from genre to genre.
- It pushes their thinking beyond retelling a story.
- It is flexible enough for students to respond in a variety of ways, yet structured enough to provide explicit instruction.


Aimee Buckner has another book which she wrote prior to Notebook Connections.
It is called Notebook Know-How Strategies for the Writer's Notebook.
I haven't read it yet; probably should have read it first.
But I am too into Notebook Connections to stop now. lol

I can't wait to tell you more about this amazing book.
It is an easy read with information that will make you want to change the way you think about, and teach, reading and writing.

Do you use, or are interested in using, reader's notebooks?
Have you read Notebook Connections?
If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts about the book and how you use notebooks in your classroom.

Your long lost friend (since I have been MIA for quite sometime),
Antoinette :)

Hey, it's Emily.  I don't usually hop on to the end of Antoinette's posts, but I couldn't help myself.  I LOVE Aimee Buckner!  More about Notebook Connections to come.  Happy Friday! :)