[LIT] Living books

[Coralie Cosgrove]

I would love to hear more about how (if) people are using living  
books.  I tried to use them this year and last year after reading  
Bruce's book, Writing Through the Tween Years.  However, I tried to  
make a distinction between the living book and their writer's  
notebook.  We split  a composition notebook into two parts.  The  
front was the living book and the back was the writer's notebook.   
The living book was to record things that happened throughout the  
year.  I modeled extensively about how to write small and include  
many details.  The writer's notebook was for story ideas and didn't  
necessarily have to be true things that happened in their lives.  I  
loved doing this and I got better results than just a journal because  
of all the modeling.   Sharing was an important part.  As students  
shared their best word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, other students  
seemed inspired to write with better language and more details.  The  
tricky part was to have time to keep up with the living book  
throughout the year when we were working on other longer projects.  I  
definitely encouraged them to take the notebooks home.

Coralie
Fifth grade
Portland, OR