Focusing on the integration of authentic writing opportunities into daily instruction, this lesson encourages teachers to promote and model the use of informal writing to inspire students to write short notes to themselves, friends, teachers, and family members. Students write short notes, to remind, plan, request or compliment, providing many natural opportunities for meaningful writing and practice in encoding/decoding written text. Note writing is particularly appealing to beginning readers and writers because the form is short, its purpose easily understood, and results are frequently concrete and immediate. This lesson describes an approach that can be adapted to a variety of instructional settings. (author/ncl)