1. Understanding the Writer’s Notebook Rubric
Student Work Samples

2. Thoughtful and/or Reflective
This writer thinks about the meaning of the topic he’s just explored.

3. Thoughtful and/or Reflective
This writer thinks about her own experience with the topic.

4. Thinking Evolves Through Writing
This writer starts with her own thoughts, and then moves into a bigger question about the topic.

5. Thinking Evolves Through Writing
She returns to the topic to explore it in a different way.

6. Thinking Evolves Through Writing
This writer starts to explore a topic in one entry...

7. Thinking Evolves Through Writing
...and returns to it to dig in more deeply.

8. Exploring a variety of topics, and going in depth
This writer has entries about several different ideas. This is one of them. She wrote brief entries about it two days in a row.

9. Exploring a variety of topics, and going in depth
Ten days later, she returns to this topic to write about it in more depth.

10. Exploring a variety of topics, and going in depth
Here she looks at a perspective other than her own.

11. Exploring a variety of topics, and going in depth
In this entry she organizes the different parts of her own point of view.

12. Descriptive Writing
This writer uses precise words to describe an action in detail.

13. Descriptive Writing The whole entry conveys a clear image.

14. Descriptive Writing
This writer describes not only what the character sees, but also what she thinks and feels.

15. Descriptive Writing This writer uses precise language to set a scene.
He uses a simile to create an image.
He experiments with a complex sentence to add detail to his description of the scene.
Descriptive Writing