Tutorial - Build a Conferring Notebook with Evernote

The week of standardized testing and my sinus infection proved to be an exhausting combination that sapped all of my blogging strength. It's finally the weekend, though, so I'm back. Hooray!!!

Today I want to share a tip for building a conferring notebook for any subject -- especially reader's and writer's workshop.

Perhaps one of my very favorite tools to use for keeping track of things is Evernote. It's a free service that you can use to organize notes, pictures, and web clippings, and it works on any device -- laptops, iPads, smartphones, etc. It also recognizes text in pictures, and can search for that text. In my personal life, that feature comes in handy when I want to snap pictures of the label on a bottle of wine worth trying again or the hair dye color I'll need for doing touchups in a few weeks. But in my classroom, I like to use it for my conferring notebook.

This tutorial will help you get started with setting up your own conferring notebook in Evernote. All you'll need is an email address.

After you register, you'll need to check your email for a confirmation code to complete the registration process, but once you have that, you'll be ready to sign in and get going!

Underneath the elephant trunk in the upper left of the screen is a list of all of your notebooks. When you first get started, you'll have a default notebook that is your user name's notebook. I like to create special notebooks for the different subjects, however, so today I'll build a notebook for Writer's Workshop by clicking the down arrow by "Notebooks" and choosing "New Notebook." I'll give it a name (Writer's Workshop) and save it.

Once the notebook is created, I can make it my default notebook (the first notebook that launches when I open Evernote and the place where new notes get saved). You can do this by hovering your mouse over the notebook's name and clicking on the arrow beside it, then choose properties. You'll know which one is your default because it will have a star beside it. 

The next step is to make a new note. Typically, I create a new note for each student. 

(Note: I'd show you my real conferring notebook on Evernote, but it's got lots of student info in it that obviously can't be shared online. You'd mostly be looking at a blur. I'll revisit this topic as it gets closer to the next school year, though, and share more tips as I clear out this year's class.)

In the actual entries, I'll type the date and a brief note about what we conferred about. It automatically saves as I go, and I can set it to sort my files by the last updated date. This is useful so I can keep track of the kids that I haven't conferred with in a while. I can also take pictures and drag and drop them into notes. This is helpful if I want to take an image of a student's writing or a book he or she is working on reading. You can also send emails to your Evernote account and specify what notebook it should be filed in. 

The real advantage of Evernote is its portability. In the past, I've never really had a notebook system that worked for me. I couldn't keep up with all of my papers and artifacts, or I'd forget to bring it home with me over the weekend to plan instruction for the week ahead. Evernote works on any device and automatically syncs, so I can access my notebook anytime, anywhere. It's perfect for me as I circulate throughout the classroom, because I can use it on my phone or iPad -- items I'm likely to have on or near me anyway. If you're looking for a new system to use next year, I would highly recommend that you give this a try!

What do you use to record your conference notes? Do you use Evernote? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below!

Thursday Reading - Biographies

Yes, I know it's called Thursday Reading, and it's being posted on Friday. I have houseguests this week, and it has thrown my schedule off a bit...In my defense, I started to write this on Thursday. :-)

This term, we are studying biographies in our reader's workshop, and we're tying it into our social studies unit on key historical figures and the abolition and suffragist movements.  At the beginning of every unit, we do a lot of read alouds and shared reading to try to determine the characteristics of a genre. As we do that, we build an anchor chart that will ultimately be used as a checklist for my students' final writing piece. This is what we've noticed so far about the biographies we're reading about Harriet Tubman:

Since we're chunking so much reading, writing, and social studies work right now, I thought it might be fun to study a related genre as well, so we're reading memoirs by people unrelated to our unit, and comparing and contrasting memoirs with biographies and autobiographies. It's definitely a fine line between the genres, but my students have been doing a good job so far of figuring out some differences.

Their big project this term will be researching and writing a biography of someone we studied this year, but I'm thinking I might try to have them write a short memoir as well to convey some aspect of their time in 4th grade.

I really like working with closely with 1-2 genres to help students see some of the nuances of that genre reoccur in several books. I think it helps students understand the concept better, and it builds their inquiry skills as they read to find the answer to the question "What are the characteristics of biography?" or "What makes a biography different from a memoir?"

Do you study biographies in your classroom? What are some of the resources or activities that have helped you in this process?

Are you a GoodReader?

I've always been a huge fan of Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis's classic text Strategies that Work. But there were some aspects of it that didn't work for me. The sticky notes, for example. Yes, I understand that it's a good compromise for getting the kids to track their thinking without writing in the book, but more often than not, the sticky notes became a track that linger longing than I'd like. They get left behind in books, fall out onto the floor, and attach themselves to shoes. And when we get right down to it, real readers don't usually use sticky notes. When I buy books -- for book clubs or professional reading especially -- I write all over them. I underline text, I write in the margins, I circle key words, and I sometimes even go back with a highlighter. I needed a way to get my students to see and do that also without breaking the bank or copyright laws.

Meet my new favorite app, GoodReader. ($4.99 in iTunes).

GoodReader allows you to annotate over .pdf files, websites, word .docs, and more. You can underline, highlight, draw pictures or boxes, type text, and create "sticky notes." It's allows us to apply all of the great "strategies that work" in a way that is more realistic and practical and far less messy.

Here's an example of an annotated text in GoodReader using some of the features.

The text is from a Reading A-Z leveled book, and we were working on collapsing sentences for summarizing (hence the "And" in the margin). But you can see the toolbar of annotating options on the right, and how that looks on the text. There's also an example of a "sticky note" in the center of the page. If you tap it, it will expand to reveal a longer, more detailed note.

As we later discovered after playing around with the app for a while, you can even change the shape of the sticky note to make question marked shaped ones.

Here's an example of the poster we use in our classroom to help us use consistent annotating features.

I have to say, this has been my favorite app to use with my students, and I think the possibilities with this app are limitless. We don't have many paid apps on our iPads because of the expense, but if you have the option of getting a few paid apps to use with students, this one is absolutely worth it. We're only really scratching the surface of what can be done, and I'm excited about exploring this app more next year.

Do you use sticky notes or think marks for reading with your students? What strategies do you use to help teach your students how to annotate texts? I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments section!