Currents in Literacy

A Journey to Publication Using Writer's Notebooks

By Laura Michel

I used to think that Writer's Workshop meant me, the teacher, standing in front of the class saying, "We are going to write a story about Native Americans," and all the students would then try to write. My fourth graders would ponder the subject and sit tapping their pencils, and I would say, "It's going to be homework if it isn't finished." And then they would write. The writing may have been five sentences, or maybe five pages. The examples would make the kind of bulletin board that every teacher recognizes: twenty-five or thirty Native American heads that flipped up with a story inside. They were cute, maybe, but nothing more, and the writing never made me say, "Wow, I love how you said that," or "tell me more about that." I agree with Shelley Harwayne when she gives advice to teachers, saying, "beware of the cute idea" (Harwayne, 1992). These were just that, simply a "cute" display for the hallway bulletin boards that people rarely stopped to actually read.

The days of these "pattern" stories are long gone for me, and for many other teachers as well. We have moved on from this kind of writing to journals, and then to writer's notebooks. Lucy Calkins has done much work with writer's notebooks, along with her colleagues at Columbia University's Teacher's College. I was lucky enough to attend her summer institute on writing along with hundreds of other educators, and we learned the specifics about using a writer's notebook ourselves as well as with our students. Other people, such as Donald Graves and Ralph Fletcher, have also written fabulous books about the use of writers' notebooks. Fletcher's book, Breathing In, Breathing Out is one of my favorites, and in it he describes the gathering of ideas in the notebook, what he refers to as "breathing in" (Fletcher, 1996).

And so, many teachers are giving it a try. They are inspiring students to live "writerly" lives, to notice things, and to wonder and remember on the page of a notebook. These progressive teachers are connecting rich literature to the writing workshop, using other authors as mentors to their students. They are also modeling themselves, by writing with their students, and "putting themselves on the line as they ask their students to do often" (Hindley, 1996). These innovative teachers are using mini-lessons to teach procedures of the workshop, writing strategies, and craft, and they are allowing plenty of time for independent writing. They are also conferring with students, teaching individually, and taking time for sharing.

This is all wonderful, but what comes next? How do we guide our students to publish their work from these entries in their notebooks? The whole point of writer's notebooks is to show students that good writers need to write a lot to find one good idea, and that they will not use everything they ever write. Those "cloned" Native American stories my students wrote were often not very original, creative, or even something my students chose to write. But they were finished. They were edited until they were free from errors, and they were published. In some classrooms, when kids are using writer's notebooks they rarely publish, and they should. We have moved away from the tedious process of all writing going through revising and editing, to no writing being published. We need to find a balance because children need to publish in order to feel like authors, and to continue in their writing lives.

It All Begins With a Seed

In order for our students to experience the entire writing process, we must not stop with notebook writing. We can do incredible mini-lessons and our students can write beautiful entries, but is that enough? I don't think so. Joanne Hindley talks about this in her insightful book In the Company of Children. She says that it is "important for students to learn how to move out of their notebooks -- to experience what it is like to stick to one piece of writing, to imagine what that piece could become, and to experiment with revising and editing" (Hindley, 1996). Students can write powerful entries in their notebooks, but if no one ever sees them finished, then what is the purpose of writing? We need to give our students the opportunity and the experience of writing for an audience, and holding a published piece of writing or giving it to a loved one, and saying "I wrote this."

It begins with a seed idea, an entry or group of entries in the notebook that the student wants to explore further. Therefore, the "seed" refers to the tiny beginning that we will nurture and feed until it grows into a perfect flower. I always ask my students to think about this choice carefully because many times children will pick something out without giving it enough thought. I model this for my students because it is a very important part of the writing process, and I want them to be conscious of their decision making.

We look for seed ideas that are important to us, and that we want to spend time crafting into a finished piece of writing. Sometimes it will be an entry that the student has revisited a lot, and sometimes it will be one entry that calls out to the student in some way. Shelley Harwayne discusses this process in Lasting Impressions, and she says that students must ask themselves questions when they are moving from their notebooks to a project. She says they should ask themselves, "What stands out? Of all my entries, what can I imagine spending a good deal of time on? What deserves my attention?" (Harwayne, 1992)

It often helps to invite students to reread many of their entries, and to experiment with something they have written. I often tell my students to pick one line that they like in their notebook and put it at the top of a new page. Then I tell them to write from that one line, or even one word, to see if that helps them form a seed. This is especially helpful to those students who may say, "I can't find anything good." Lucy Calkins says "sometimes it's not a whole entry, even, that catches my attention. Sometimes it's a few lines, part of an entry" (Calkins, 1994). It can be anything, and we have to trust that the entry that our students choose is the right one for them. Sometimes we, as teachers, feel the urge to tell our students which entry we like the best, but we must resist. They choose it for a reason, and we have to honor their decision.

Once the decision is made, I ask my students to tag their seed idea with a bookmark so that I can make copies of them later. Joanne Hindley talks about her own process for having kids choose a seed idea in In the Company of Children. She says that she usually chooses a small group of students to begin a project first, and then starts small groups of kids in "waves" so that everyone is at a different stage in their path to publication. She likes to do it this way so that the first children to start can model their processes for the rest of the class, and so that no small group needs all the attention at a given time (Hindley, 1996). It is a great idea, and one that I would suggest teachers try for themselves. Your class will guide you to the best ways to start projects, and it may be different each year for each group of children.

Nurturing The Seed With Mini-Lessons

Once the children have their seed idea, and it is photocopied onto another piece of paper, we say that it is "out" of the notebook. I always have my students put their notebooks away for a while as we nurture the seed and move toward publication. At this point it is helpful for the students to use a folder or a section of a binder to work on their topics, because they will be using other pieces of paper and we don't want them to get "lost." Shelley Harwayne suggests having students fold down the page of their notebook to remind them that they are only working on that project (Harwayne, 1992). No matter what method you use, this is the time for the children to live with their topics, to gather more information, and to shape their entries into a certain type of writing.

We need to do mini-lessons to support our students as they live with their seed idea. Many times, I invite students to gather more information about their topic, reread their entries, try a certain genre, or read what they have written to a friend. Shelley Harwayne (as cited in Hindley, 1996), states that "students need to be reminded of all the purposes writing serves. Once a writer has decided on the purpose of a project, she can more easily imagine the possible forms it could take." We need to help kids make choices by modeling, explaining, and teaching in mini-lessons. Lucy Calkins suggests that there are four types of mini-lessons: classroom procedures, writing strategies, craft, and skills (Calkins, 1997). When students are living with a seed idea, we should do mini-lessons primarily on writing strategies and craft, helping the children to gather ideas and form a draft. Once they have an audience and a draft, they can begin the process of revising.

Nancie Atwell says, "I've learned that when students don't revise their writing, it's usually because they don't know how" (Atwell, 1998). We need to show our students how to revise by revising our own work in front of them, and giving them strategies to revise independently. By making changes to our writing publicly, we show students that it is all right to cross out, to move sentences around and even to cut the paper apart and tape it back together in a different order. We can use student writing to help us show revision strategies as well, asking a student to explain what they did to make their piece better. Some strategies that help students revise are to take a short draft and expand it, predict a reader's questions, or rework a lead or ending (Calkins, 1994). Along with these strategies, I always encourage my students to use other authors as mentors for their drafts. I teach them to look to other writers for advice, like looking at lots of poetry if they are drafting a poem, or reading books about butterflies if that is what their piece is about. Great literature should always be used as a tool for revision.

Nancie Atwell teaches older students, but she writes about some excellent tools she teaches her students in the Writing Workshop. She teaches students to use carets, arrows, and asterisks, and to highlight, circle, and even to cross out. When students are fearful of crossing out because it will mess up their page, we need to give them "visual proof that this is what writers do" (Atwell, 1998). We need to show them that it is hard to throw away some of the words you have written so carefully, but that doing so will make us better writers. Mini-lessons can accomplish this through direct instruction, modeling, and demonstration.

We can make charts for the classroom that list our revision strategies, adding new ones as we discover them. We can suggest that our children listen to their drafts and see what they hear. Do they hear a song, or a letter? We can ask them to use a "snapshot" technique, showing what they want to say instead of simply telling it, or we can ask them to "explode a moment," stretching the exciting parts of their stories (Harper, 1997). "No one revision strategy is right for every child, and certainly no strategy could be right for every child on a given day, but it gives children a repertoire of strategies from which they can draw" (Calkins, 1994). Just as a piece of clay is molded into a shape, a child's draft begins to take on a shape of its own.

Conferring: The Sunshine And The Rain

For teachers, conferring can be very challenging, but it is essential to the Writing Workshop and to the writing process. It is something we, as educators, try to improve upon all the time, but we are never really sure that we are good at it. I have watched countless videos and listened to numerous authorities give presentations on conferring with children, but I think the best way to get better at it is to just do it. Talking with our students naturally and honestly, as well as really listening to what they have to say will guide us to successful conferences.

Joanne Hindley says, "Conferring with students requires that I have a vision of what I hope for them as writers. Just as listening up close has everything to do with how to confer, stepping back to see the big picture is equally important" (Hindley, 1996). We, as teachers, need to spend time with kids individually, sitting close and learning about their world through their writing. But we must be careful not to "teach" too much, and try to focus on one or two areas on which our students can work. The silence, the listening, is often more important than the advice, and we have to remember that when we feel the urge to jump into the conversation with a student.

Lucy Calkins tells a story about role playing a conference for a professional workshop. She was playing the role of the student who wrote the following draft:

One time my grandfather was in the hospital. He didn't get any better. So he went to God. I miss my grandfather.

When she finished reading it, many teachers in the audience played the role of the teacher, saying "What did the hospital look like?" and "Do you plan to revise this?" After many responses, a woman timidly said, "This probably isnt the right response, but to tell the truth, I'd hug the child and say I was sorry her grandfather died" (Calkins, 1994).

This vignette shows us that we need to be human, to show kids that what they have to say is important and true. These conferences are often referred to as content conferences because they deal with the topic the student has thoughtfully chosen and how mentors can keep a child focused on that topic. These conferences can also help children see a deeper meaning of the topic about which they are writing. I had this experience when I was conferring with a second grader, Colin, about his memories of his dog. He had written some facts about his dog's death, but during our conference, we discussed why he missed him so much, and that the dog had died from drinking oil from his grandpa's car. Colin later wrote about the dog's collar that hangs from his mother's car mirror, and the ways his family has changed from their pet's death. This is the essence of a content conference.

Other types of conferences include design, process, and evaluation. (Calkins, 1994). The conferences that focus on design help children to put their writing in a purposeful order, and to experiment with various leads or endings. Very young children are able to see their topics in categories, just as they can see categories of buttons or blocks. More mature students can experiment with order of events, and with various types of leads, like dialogue or action. In process conferences, we coach our students to be metacognitively aware of their writing process. We should allow our students to voice their strategies, and then teach them strategies they may use someday. Finally, evaluation conferences are discussions with kids about how they view their work, how it is changing, and what makes it their best effort.

Yes, conferring is hard. We want to help our students by teaching them what we already know about good writing, but we should also give them the opportunity to learn that on their own. I think that listening to ourselves and others on tape is a good way to improve our skills in conferring. That way, we step back and look at our own "big picture," and therefore, reflect on what we are doing and need to be doing to best serve our students. Conferring is a crucial step in the writing process, a leap in the right direction, a milestone along the path to publication.

Editing: A Final Weeding

Just as conferring is challenging for teachers, editing is difficult for children. They are anxious for their work to be "done" and they don't want to take the time for this final step. But this step is extremely important, and it is our job, as educators, to give our students the tools they need to be successful and willing editors. The first thing we can do is to model the process with our own writing, much like we did with revisions. By putting our own work on the overhead projector, we can show kids that everyone needs to edit and pay close attention to conventions of the English language.

We used to say, "Don't worry about spelling, just get your ideas down." I still agree that students should concentrate on the meaning of their writing foremost, but we must not teach carelessness when it comes to grammar and spelling. I expect kids to make mistakes, but I also expect them to recall past mini-lessons, use rules we have learned about spelling, and to recognize if spelling is a problem for them. We need to find ways to interest students in spelling and grammatical rules, making it fun to explore, ponder, and wonder about our complex language (Calkins, 1994).

In my second grade classroom, the editing process always begins with the child. It wasn't always this way, as it was with those Native American stories where I was the only editor in the room! But now, I make the task enjoyable for students by setting up "editing bags" which contain three different colored pencils. On the outside of the bag, I have a code for each colored pencil; one for spelling, one for punctuation and capitalization, and one for adding or deleting words or phrases. My goal is for the children to reread their writing, underlining words they think are misspelled, capitalizing and adding punctuation, and smoothing out the flow of the piece. They really enjoy this process, and I have found that my students are really aware of the errors they make, and often catch nearly all of them. Another strategy that many teachers give their students is to read their piece backwards, in order to find spelling errors in isolation.

After a child has self-edited, the next step is to have an editing conference with a peer. Of course, this must be modeled a lot before kids can be successful at it, but they can do it. Children sometimes have trouble with this, though, and they protest that the peer editor is being too critical, or that their partner is "wrong." Again, modeling how to be a good writing teacher is the key, and reminding peer editors that they may give advice, but the writer has the final decisions (Calkins, 1994). After the peer conference, children should use the resources in the room, such as environmental print, dictionaries, and charts in the classroom to correct spelling and grammar. Then they are ready to see the teacher.

Somewhere in the process, either independently or with a peer, students can use editing checklists. Many teachers use these lists to help children ask themselves important questions about their editing process. Even very young children can use simple editing checklists, such as ones that say, "name, date, and page numbers." Older children can use checklists that have more sophisticated questions, like "Have you reread your piece, imagining the questions the reader may have?" It is a good idea to get children in the habit of using these lists that can change over time. Once a student knows how to use terminal punctuation correctly, it should be replaced on his or her list with something else (Calkins, 1994).

The final stage and conference before publication is with the teacher. If the children have done a good job, then their writing should be almost perfect. But in many cases, it won't be. It will be a product of very hard work, though, so we need to treat it with that in mind. Lucy Calkins always skims a piece of writing at an editing conference without a pen first, to get the sense of the piece overall (Calkins, 1994). It is then that we should celebrate and admire the writer for all he or she has done. We need to find some things that the writer has done successfully, and let them know that we notice and commend them for their efforts. Then, and only then do we choose one or two things to teach the child. We must remember that this is a final conference, and we cannot decide that the piece needs more revision. The editing conference is the final stage before publication.

One editing strategy that is very helpful for children's spelling is from Diane Snowball (cited in Hindley, 1996) in her book Ideas For Spelling. She suggests folding a piece of paper into three columns, with first try, second try, and okay at the top of each column. The student copies the words into the first column directly from the draft. Then, he or she looks at it and gives it another try in the second column. Finally, if the spelling is still incorrect, the teacher writes the words in the third column, leaving blanks where the child needs to figure out a letter. In this "hang-man" type fashion, kids can concentrate on only the letters they know are incorrect, and often times, they are successful.

Because our classrooms are crowded, and we are always short on time, the edited piece of writing should go into a teacher's box after the editing conference. I believe, as does Calkins, that the writing should be edited finally by the teacher. Some teachers call themselves the editor in chief or the final editor, and they explain that all authors have final editors for their work. Personally, I make the last corrections on post-it notes or in pencil, and then deliver it to the child for publication. Some teachers disagree with this, but I think that if we are going to teach kids to write for a real and purposeful audience, we need to teach them that their work should be free from errors. The exception to this may be the kindergarten and first grade classrooms, where invented spelling is applauded and posted for everyone to appreciate. That is a question for individual teachers to ponder and decide.

After the final editing is complete, students can copy their precious words into its "finished form." This may mean copying it onto a beautiful piece of stationery, writing it boldly on a poster, or filling the blank pages of a picture book. Maybe they will type it on the computer in the form of a newspaper article, or perhaps it will be a poem, framed and wrapped for their grandma. Whatever they do, it will be published, but unlike my class's Native American stories, their writing will mean something to them. In fact, it will mean that they are authors, and that they have expressed their thoughts and crafted their own words on paper. That is no small accomplishment, indeed.

Celebrating The Beauty

Once children have published writing, we need to celebrate! I have had many writing celebrations in my classroom, and they have all been successful. In fact, on one occasion, we invited parents and read our finished pieces over a microphone. I was very apprehensive about one girl in my class in particular. Brittany was very anxious about new and scary situations, so I was convinced that she would burst into tears when she saw the parents gathering. To my amazement, Brittany came over and sat close to me, and when it was her turn, she read the loudest of anyone, not a tear in sight. That was truly one of my most memorable moments with my second graders, as I listened to Brittany over the microphone, her voice strong and steady. She later wrote about the experience in her notebook, saying "I felt like I won the gold medal at the Olympics."

There are many other ways to celebrate our writing besides having parents, food, and microphones. Celebrating could mean reading it at the dinner table, posting it in the school lobby, or sending it to Nickelodeon. We often have posters of an "author of the month" as part of our literacy program, but what about the class authors? Why not have a student author of the month as well? Publication and celebration helps our students consider themselves as authors, not just because we tell them they are, but because we believe they are and treat them in the same way.

The journey to publication is a hard one, but one that is very worthwhile. Children need to hear teachers referring to them as authors throughout the writing process, and they need to work through the entire writing process. Children who only write in journals or notebooks and never work on a project outside the notebook are missing out. They can write entries and more entries and drafts in their notebooks, but they will never consider themselves authors if they do not revise, reread, conference, edit, conference again, and publish! Children who never publish feel as though they are looking at a bunch of seeds in a pile of soil, but they never grow. They never feel the excitement of the first sprout, or the first sign of a colorful bud. They never see the beauty of a perfect garden.

Finally, there are classrooms that publish only once a year, for a special project or presentation. Yes, they have published, but they are missing out on going through the process more than once, because the second and third times will be approached with more energy and experience. Lucy Calkins gives sound advice to teachers, saying, "As soon as your workshop is underway, it is time to help children view themselves as authors. Publish the pieces, put out bookbinding supplies, celebrate their finished work....and do it by mid-October" (Calkins, 1994). I completely agree. Do it at least by mid-October!

References

Atwell, Nancie (1998) In the Middle New Understandings About Writing Reading and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Calkins, Lucy McCormick (1994) The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fletcher, Ralph (1996) Breathing In Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Harper, Laura (1997) "The Writer's Toolbox: Five Tools for Active Revision." Language Arts, 74, 193-200.

Harwayne, Shelley (1992) Lasting Impressions: Weaving Literature into the Writing Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hindley, Joanne (1996) In the Company of Children. York, ME: Stenhouse.

Laura Michel is a graduate student in the Consulting Teacher of Reading program at Lesley. She has taught fourth and second grade, and she learns from her students every day.