In fifth grade your child will be collecting and developing writing ideas in a notebook in Writer’s Workshop. During writing workshop we will explore many different genres of writing and study the craft of well-known authors to improve our own writing skills. All students have been given their own writer’s notebook, but I would like your child to personalize his or her notebook to generate a greater sense of ownership. This notebook will be the place where creative ideas, personal feelings, and new characters will be created and developed throughout the year. You won’t believe the growth your child will make this year as a writer! It will be fun for you to browse through your child’s notebook as the year goes on to observe the constant progress.

The idea is that we design our notebooks to be an inspiration of stories for us. To best serve this purpose, we can decorate them with images of meaningful people, places and moments of our lives. Please begin to collect meaningful and inspiring items such as:

Photos (They will be cut and pasted on the notebook, so you may want to make copies of the photos)

Souvenirs (tickets from special events, pictures from brochures, etc.)

Magazine Pictures (Students can cut out fun pictures from magazines of animals, favorite foods, favorite celebrities, meaningful words, etc.)

Quotes (inspiring words about writing or other topics)

Scrapbook Materials (stickers, decorative paper, stamps, etc.)

Be Creative! (Bring anything else that you can think of!)

Please remind your child to choose the materials he or she will use to decorate the writer’s notebook and bring the materials to school in an envelope or folder by Tuesday, October 9.

If printing materials is challenging, you may email printable files to me and I will gladly print them. Please do not directly attach images to an email for printing. It is much easier if you size them for how large you would like them printed (in a Word document, Google Doc, slideshow etc), prior to sending them. Please ensure these have been prepared and sent by Tuesday, October 9.

Lastly, we will be assembling these notebooks in class on Wednesday and Thursday next week. On Friday, we will be covering them in plastic to protect all of the images. This is quite a process and we would love a couple parent volunteers who may have an hour to spare to help us plastic-cover them. Please let me know if you can help! It would be great if you were available from 1:30-2 to help.

See the presentation below for some ideas!