Nonfiction Notebooks

Author: Aimee Elizabeth Buckner
Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers
ISBN: 1571109528
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
"Explains how writer's notebooks can help students improve their nonfiction writing--reports, articles, memoirs, essays, and so forth--which has taken on even greater importance because of the emphasis the Common Core State Standards place on informative/explanatory writing. As Aimee explains, the prewriting work a student does is particularly important when writing informational pieces. Writer's notebooks help students capture their thoughts, develop ideas, explore mentor texts, refine a research strategy, and play with multiple outcomes--all of which lead to stronger concepts and better first drafts. Greater emphasis on the front end of the writing process also saves time and energy at the revision and editing stages. From exploring topics to gathering information to assessment, Nonfiction Notebooks takes teachers step-by-step through the process of how best to use notebooks for informational writing. Grades 3-8."--Back cover.

Nonfiction Matters

Author: Stephanie Harvey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003842712
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
When we open the gates to nonfiction inquiry, we open our thinking and expect the unexpected, making reading discoveries, research discoveries, and writing discoveries on our way. Nonfiction Matters offers teachers the tools to help students explore nonfiction and dig deep to reach more complete understanding of the real world and report these insights in a compelling manner. Stephanie Harvey shows how students can read expository text, engage in research, and write authentic nonfiction that is captivating, visual, and full of voice. The inquiry projects she describes require in-depth learning: topic selection, question development, research exploration, reading for content, organization, synthesis, writing to convey meaning, and presenting findings—all skills that develop independent thinkers who know how to make decisions, solve problems, and apply their knowledge insightfully. Full of practical suggestions to help you bring nonfiction into your curriculum, Nonfiction Matters: presents strategies for understanding expository text and conducting meaningful research;offers ideas for organizing and writing accurate, effective nonfiction from idea to finished presentation;advances the importance of teacher modeling and guided practice in instructional delivery;provides a list of inquiry tools and resources—both print and electronic;suggests ways to facilitate project-based learning and assess the projects as they develop;includes bibliographies of nonfiction children's books by subject and genre and lists of recommended magazines.Why is nonfiction almost a guaranteed success? The key to teaching with nonfiction is passion, for children are passionate inquirers, and nonfiction fuels their curiosity and their demand for knowledge and understanding of the world.

Desert Notebooks

Author: Ben Ehrenreich
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640093540
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
Layering climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences, this New York Times Notable Book presents a stunning reckoning with our current moment and with the literal and figurative end of time. Desert Notebooks examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before. As inhabitants of the Anthropocene, what might some of our own histories tell us about how to confront apocalypse? And how might the geologies and ecologies of desert spaces inform how we see and act toward time—the pasts we have erased and paved over, this anxious present, the future we have no choice but to build? Ehrenreich draws on the stark grandeur of the desert to ask how we might reckon with the uncertainty that surrounds us and fight off the crises that have already begun. In the canyons and oases of the Mojave and in Las Vegas’s neon apocalypse, Ehrenreich finds beauty, and even hope, surging up in the most unlikely places, from the most barren rocks, and the apparent emptiness of the sky. Desert Notebooks is a vital and necessary chronicle of our past and our present—unflinching, urgent—yet timeless and profound.

A Writer's Notebook

Author: Ralph Fletcher
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062014935
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Book Description
Tap into your inner writer with this book of practical advice by the bestselling author of How Writers Work and the ALA Notable Book Fig Pudding. Writers are just like everyone else—except for one big difference. Most people go through life experiencing daily thoughts and feelings, noticing and observing the world around them. But writers record these thoughts and observations. They react. And they need a special place to record those reactions. Perfect for classrooms, A Writer’s Notebook gives budding writers a place to keep track of all the little things they notice every day. Young writers will love these useful tips for how to use notes and jottings to create stories and poems of their own.

Wandering Time

Author: Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816518661
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Fleeing a failed marriage and haunted by ghosts of his past, Luis Alberto Urrea jumped into his car several years ago and headed west. Driving cross-country with a cat named Rest Stop, Urrea wandered the West from one year's Spring through the next. Hiking into aspen forests where leaves "shiver and tinkle like bells" and poking alongside creeks in the Rockies, he sought solace and wisdom. In the forested mountains he learned not only the names of trees—he learned how to live. As nature opened Urrea's eyes, writing opened his heart. In journal entries that sparkle with discovery, Urrea ruminates on music, poetry, and the landscape. With wonder and spontaneity, he relates tales of marmots, geese, bears, and fellow travelers. He makes readers feel mountain air "so crisp you feel you could crunch it in your mouth" and reminds us all to experience the magic and healing of small gestures, ordinary people, and common creatures. Urrea has been heralded as one of the most talented writers of his generation. In poems, novels, and nonfiction, he has explored issues of family, race, language, and poverty with candor, compassion, and often astonishing power. Wandering Time offers his most intimate work to date, a luminous account of his own search for healing and redemption.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion

Author: Annette Whipple
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1641601698
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Eager young readers can now discover and experience Laura Ingalls Wilder's books like never before. Author Annette Whipple encourages children to engage in pioneer activities while thinking deeper about the Ingalls and Wilder families as portrayed in the nine Little House books. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Companion provides brief introductions to each Little House book, chapter-by-chapter story guides, and "Fact or Fiction" sidebars, plus 75 activities, crafts, and recipes that encourage kids to "Live Like Laura" using easy-to-find supplies. Thoughtful questions help the reader develop appreciation and understanding of Wilder's stories. Every aspiring adventurer will enjoy this walk alongside Laura from the big woods to the golden years.

True Notebooks

Author: Mark Salzman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307429849
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
In 1997 Mark Salzman, bestselling author Iron and Silk and Lying Awake, paid a reluctant visit to a writing class at L.A.’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage offenders, many of them charged with murder. What he found so moved and astonished him that he began to teach there regularly. In voices of indelible emotional presence, the boys write about what led them to crime and about the lives that stretch ahead of them behind bars. We see them coming to terms with their crime-ridden pasts and searching for a reason to believe in their future selves. Insightful, comic, honest and tragic, True Notebooks is an object lesson in the redemptive power of writing.

Writers and Their Notebooks

Author: Diana M. Raab
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611179939
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Personal reflections on the vital role of the notebook in creative writing, from Dorianne Laux, Sue Grafton, John Dufresne, Kyoko Mori, and more. This collection of essays by established professional writers explores how their notebooks serve as their studios and workshops—places to collect, to play, and to make new discoveries with language, passions, and curiosities. For these diverse writers, the journal also serves as an ideal forum to develop their writing voice, whether crafting fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Some include sample journal entries that have since developed into published pieces. Through their individual approaches to keeping a notebook, the contributors offer valuable advice, personal recollections, and a hearty endorsement of the value of using notebooks to document, develop, and nurture a writer’s creative spark.

Notebook Know-how

Author: Aimee Elizabeth Buckner
Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers
ISBN: 1571104135
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Book Description
Presents tips for elementary and middle school teachers on how to use writing notebooks to help students develop skills and habits associated with good writing.

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110115246X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Book Description
Three-time Newbery Honor author Jacqualine Woodson explores race and sexuality through the eyes of a compelling narrator Melanin Sun has a lot to say. But sometimes it's hard to speak his mind, so he fills up notebooks with his thoughts instead. He writes about his mom a lot--they're about as close as they can be, because they have no other family. So when she suddenly tells him she's gay, his world is turned upside down. And if that weren't hard enough for him to accept, her girlfriend is white. Melanin Sun is angry and scared. How can his mom do this to him--is this the end of their closeness? What will his friends think? And can he let her girlfriend be part of their family?