Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche asks us to reflect on the word “refresh” for her DigiLit Sunday link up. This thinking took me to the classroom, to students.
The school year is winding down. Students are letting go. I see it in their writing, their actions, their faces. They are leaving. 
Last week, students crowded around me to ask for new notebooks. I thought it a little wasteful. I started to say, don’t you have any pages left? I thought, aren’t new notebooks for beginnings? But on reflection, I realize, this is a beginning of sorts.
In elementary school, students learn to read. Reading and writing happen every day. Students have been taught to choose books they want to read, to notice and wonder, to get their thoughts on the page. They can read and write about what interests them.
Once middle school years begin, structures and expectations are different. Bell schedules, textbooks, after school activities, take up a lot of space. Reading and writing for choice can get lost in this busy world. All the more reason to give them a notebook to start their less scaffolded reading and writing lives.
In twenty days, my students leave the place they learned to read and write. Time to refresh the page with a new notebook with the expectation that they hold and carry on reading and writing.
To Read To Write To Be 
What a “refreshing” way to look at the remaining time left in the school year, especially for those students on the threshold of a new experience. Although I no longer teach on a daily basis, your post gave me something new to think about: that endings are sometimes beginnings!
Maybe new notebooks will help curtail some of the restlessness that sets in at this time of year. Thanks for linking up today.
The notebooks symbolize the patterns and habits that they still have time to build as they are not YET ready to stop learning. What a good sign!
Such a range – Margaret’s 3 days to your 20 days to Tara’s six weeks! Celebrating new beginnings as well as endings – unbroken circles of learning!!! ❤
That would be a wonderful and symbolic way to close one door and open another.
What could be better to carry your students into their summer writing than new notebooks? Sounds perfect to me!
New notebooks are a great way to refresh! Glad you are giving it the green light!
New notebooks to carry your students into the summer. I like this idea, Julieanne. Refresh the page with inspired thoughts.