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!