Share how you've used Amelia's Notebook to inspire your students!

[Corbett Harrison]

Marissa Moss's Amelia's Notebook (as well as the other 10+ books in her Amelia series) is a pretty perfect type of mentor text for your students keeping their own writer's notebooks.  The book is set-up to look like an actual composition book, and Amelia writes things down on her lined pages that will inspire your students to ask, "We can write that kind of stuff in our notebooks!"

 

If you are a member of this group and have used any of the Amelia notebooks as a mentor text, please share details in the reply box below!  At the end of the school year, we'll send complimentary NNWP Print Guides to the ten best Amelia-inspired suggestions from teachers.

 

Thanks for sharing back with our site!  Be sure to visit WritingFix's Writer's Notebook Resource page for more ideas.

 

--Corbett Harrison, WritingFix Webmaster

[Corbett Harrison]

Eileen, a member of this writer's notebook group, sent us this description of how she's using Amelia as a mentor text, inspiring us to create this post where anyone can share their ideas too. Thanks for being our pioneer, Eileen.

Corbett;

I'm using Writer's Notebooks with my English Language Learners who typically don't think they have anything to write, or who are hampered by their lack of English language skills. So, my plan is a relatively simple one; I invited my students to analyze similarities between themselves and the main character, Amelia.

Day One; I shared that I would be reading picture books with them/ to them all year, and gave a reason: they are short, examples of great writing, and they are fun! Then, I told them our purpose: we all have experiences in common, and asked them to write the 'big question' at the top of their notebook page: 'How am I like Amelia?' and encouraged everyone to ignore the obvious difference, and stretch to find commonalities instead.


Then, over the next many days (took us almost 2 weeks to finish), I shared pages from Amelia, pausing often to ask my students questions to help them find the similarities.

List making is not a very advanced strategy, but it is an important one. And as I told my students, if you can make a long enough list, you will always have something to write about.

Yesterday, we finally finished 'Amelia's Notebook' and I made sure to wrap it up by having my students tell me the essence of Amelia's entries - that Amelia wrote what was important to her; her feelings, her experiences, and that's what I want from them right now in their Notebooks as well.

My students enjoyed 'AN' so much, they wanted to know if Amelia had other books, and could I get those and read them too? And all my students were able to generate quite a long list of topics and memories that they can come back to and write more about.

[Traci Mendoza]

Hi Corbett,
I am using Amelia's Notebook with my second graders. We read about her moving to a new house and how that made her feel. We then drew maps of our houses in our WN (yes, I write "we" because I am doing it right along with my kids) and then we wrote about which room we would miss the most. The next time we read about how unfair Amelia felt everything was because of her age. We read Jamie Lee Curtis's "It's Hard to be Five" and then we made lists in our WN about why it's hard to be 7 or 8 or 40!! We had a great time with that!! I am loving WN!