"In my classroom, I have found that through the support of notebook work, students can grow their writing and strengthen their ideas. With strong ideas, they can write better first drafts. The work we do in notebooks before rushing into a draft gives us time to envision our work, to find mentor texts we love, and to study those texts. In doing so, we actually are doing a lot of the "revision" on our "vision" before we write the draft. -- Nonfiction Notebooks"Aimee Buckner has introduced writer's notebooks to hundreds of classrooms through her popular "book Notebook Know-How," thereby helping students everywhere learn to improve their overall writing by focusing on essential prewriting strategies. Now, using the same format, Aimee 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. Helpful reproducible forms are included both in the book and as downloads online.

"The question I grappled with was how to move students from "couch-potato" readers who can answer basic questions with one word"-"to readers who think while reading"-"to readers who think beyond their reading." -Aimee Buckner In "Notebook Know-How," Aimee Buckner demonstrated the power of notebooks to spark and capture students' ideas in the writing workshop. In "Notebook Connections," she turns her focus to the reading workshop, showing how to transform those "couch-potato" readers into deep thinkers. Buckner's fourth-grade students use reader's notebooks as a place to document their thinking and growth, to support their thinking for group discussions, and to explore their own ideas about a text without every entry being judged as evidence of their reading progress. Buckner describes her model as flexible enough for students to respond in a variety of ways yet structured enough to provide explicit instruction. "Notebook Connections" leads teachers through the process of launching, developing, and fine-tuning a reader's notebook program. Teacher-guided lessons in every chapter help students create anchor texts for their notebooks using various comprehension and writing strategies. As students become more proficient, they grow more independent in their thinking and responses and will begin to select the strategies that work best for them. In the process, the notebook becomes a bridge that helps students make connections between ideas, texts, strategies, and their work as readers and writers. "Notebook Connections, "filled with lesson ideas and assessment tips, provides a comprehensive model for making reader's notebooks the centerpiece of your reading workshop.