According to Ralph Fletcher, "a writer's notebook should reflect your personality."  Because of this, we take a short period, on the first Friday of every new year, to decorate our writer's notebooks.  I have been doing this same activity for years and have come to find out students treasure their personalized notebooks and keep them to look back on years later.  Below are a few photos of students working on personalizing their writer's notebooks.

Some 5th graders showing off their decorated Writer's Notebooks!

It has been a great first few weeks of school.  In SS, we have learned about the SS Themes, the Bill of Rights, and are now currently learning about the causes of the Civil War. 
In ELA, Reading Genres and poetry terms have been studied.  We have worked with Greek and Latin roots, homophones, and types of sentences.  The students have written poetry booklets, and we are currently studying figurative language. 
Needless to say, our days are busy!