Bits & Pieces, List & Notes, by Elizabeth Swartz

Two basic organizational tools that will help kids create more complex pieces for their writing portfolios

Becoming a good writer is a process in which separate skills need to be learned, practiced in isolation and mastered before they come together in a piece of writing. Some of our students will go on to write best-selling novels, but scores more will write every day as part of their jobs. We can't know who will choose which path, so it's a good idea to prepare them all.

With that goal in mind, this year's reproducibles will help students develop various writing skills and produce samples for a writing portfolio. The first skills we'll work on are those of making lists and taking notes.

Basic organization.
List-making utilizes the ability to generate information from within ourselves and, later, the ability to prioritize. I like to begin by modeling lists. I list things I do during a school day, things that need to be brought to school for a field trip or books I want to read.

When the kids begin making lists, it's a good idea to give them specific directions: "List all the things you did last night between 6 o'clock and 8 o'clock, in sequence," or: "List everything in the rubric that concerns your diorama."

You can make short oral lists with kindergarten students. List-making can continue throughout high school, where students can be taught to use lists for their own purposes.

Collecting information.
Note-taking is the opposite of making lists, since it requires gleaning information from an outside source. Even though notes may end up resembling a list, it's only after information is found and processed that it can be put into a list.

If you teach young students, try brainstorming notes after an assembly, read-aloud or video. Older children can practice taking notes on acted-out phone conversations, the morning announcements or news broadcasts. Assign fiction and nonfiction reading with specific requirements for the notes, such as setting, theme, main character, etc. Ask students to see a newly-released movie and make notes at the end.

I tell students that notes aren't just phrases scribbled on a scrap of paper. They're specific pieces of information reserved for future use. Often, notes are pieces of a puzzle that will only form a cohesive picture after many of them are found from several different sources. That's one reason why it's important to document sources.

After students have practiced making lists and taking notes, put their written efforts into folders that will become their writing portfolios. At the end of the school year, when they look back at the lists they made this month, they'll be amazed to see how far they've come.

For Reproducible click here. PDF 81KB

Elizabeth Swartz is librarian at Watsontown Elementary School and Turbotville Elementary School in PA.