Reader’s Notebook
As the beginning of another school year fast approaches, have you been wondering about the Reader’s Notebook and how to implement it effectively in the classroom?
If you have always wanted to integrate the Reader’s Notebook into the Reading Workshop but don’t know how or where to start, here at schoolED Consulting, we can support with the implementation of this important instructional tool.
What is Reader’s Notebook?
The Reader’s Notebook is a term spoken about often but rarely utilised to its full potential in classrooms. If implemented with fidelity it can be a powerful element of the Reading Workshop, allowing readers to develop their reading identities by monitoring and deepening comprehension.
Students can use the Reader’s Notebook as a place to document their thinking and growth, record evidence and deeply explore and evaluate ideas and wonderings. It allows students to be active participants in their learning, empowering them to be independent and accountable. This is supported by the teacher’s role in providing modelled examples of authentic responses through explicit teaching.
Effective implementation of the Reader’s Notebook fosters metacognitive strategies to support students ‘thinking about thinking.’ This allows students to self-monitor, reflect and track progress while reading.
The role of metacognition in learning has been widely researched as one of the key instructional practices contributing to significant student learning growth. Identified as one of the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS), John Hattie’s research measured the average effect size for metacognitive strategies at 0.69. In addition to this, the Australian Teaching and Learning Toolkit reports an impact of 7+ months of additional learning growth for the use of metacognitive strategies.
schoolED can provide support with the following:
- Assist with the initial set up of the Reader’s Notebook across a range of year levels.
- Model lesson ideas and assessment tips for teachers.
- Provide a comprehensive model for making the Reader’s Notebook an authentic component of the Reading Workshop.
- Provide authentic worked examples of notebook entries.
- Develop a plan for sustained use of the Reader’s Notebook.
- Work with students to model metacognitive strategies.
- Model how to use the notebook to track and reflect on student goal setting.
