Organizing student writing tools in a writing binder
There’s something about the sweet spot in upper elementary.
Too young to drive but old enough to learn how to snap a binder shut without getting their fingers stuck in the rings…
most of the time.
There’s always one.
Anyway, despite the danger of clipping your fingers, I loved using a Writing Binder with my students.
Our writing binders had divider tabs in them, and they were usually labeled:
- Helpful tools
- Mentor sentences
- Personal spelling list
- Published pieces
Here’s what went into each section.
Helpful tools
Any handouts I wanted students to keep handy that didn’t go into their writer’s notebooks went into this section. This might be a document that showed the writing process or a template or format for planning a specific genre.
We also put our writing revision checklists and our tools for peer revision in this section! You can learn more about how I taught kids to revise their own writing here and get the tools I used to teach kids to be good writing supports for each other here in the Writer’s Workshop Toolkit!
A five senses organizer for details would go in this section as well, or a typed-up mentor text that we were analyzing – anything kids might reference as they were working through a piece of writing.
Mentor sentences
In this section, we included all of the mentor sentence grammar lessons. We pasted their mentor sentence pieces on a sheet of paper and analyzed it, working through it all week long. Grammar tools went in this section as well, connected to the mentor sentence that taught us those skills.
A separate spiral also works really well for mentor sentences.
You can learn more about my mentor sentence instruction for grammar here!
Personal spelling list
Kids kept a personal spelling list of words that they frequently misspelled – they may have learned them wrong and practiced them that way over time. As they edited each piece, I required them to use their own spelling list to edit their writing before they could be “done” with that step.
You can get the Spelling Folders here!
Published pieces
Our writing collection was housed in our binders, too, unless we decided to have it in its own folder for some reason that year. Students held onto their writing after it had been scored/discussed, so we could reflect on their growth! It was also a helpful tool for parent conferences.
Get the Writing Collection checklists here in Writer’s Workshop Toolkit
