First Day of Interactive Notebooks

Today was the first day of interactive notebooks and I think it was a great success! I feel very confident with the work we have done so far in them.  We actually accomplished a lot in the 90 minutes that I have them.  It was slightly more difficult to get the students' pages coordinated with mine as far as having everything on the same page number and getting it organized correctly in the table of contents, but I know the hard work will pay off when the notebooks are orderly.  I am excited to see how this newfound organization will help my students learn.

It took a little time and a lot of demonstrating with my own example notebook to get our notebooks ready, but we did it!  One class even got finished early and I was able to do an "Example Notes" lesson with them. They were very curious to learn how we would use these notebooks.  The most helpful thing I learned from today is that I am glad I made a "Teacher Notebook" as an example.  It really helped them to see me do it along with them and this is a strategy that I will implement daily in my classroom!

Example Note-Taking Lesson

This is the reading list where
my students will record the
books that they read this year.
I found this gem in the book
Reading in the Wild by
Donalyn Miller.

This is the table of contents that I made for our
notebooks.  After all of my classes had taped it in, a sweet
student helped me realize that...I had misnumbered!
It was a sad moment, but then, we just scratched them
out and corrected them.

I had thought that we would have enough time to decorate our notebooks by pasting clippings from magazines on the front cover (and maybe the back, too), but we didn't get to do this yet! I do still hope to do this.  Maybe on Monday.  Decorating the notebooks really allows the kids to personalize them and I honestly think it allows them to engage with my class more.  It is something that is personal to them and that makes it more meaningful.  I had been told this before, but I had never really believed it until I saw it for myself. Having something of their own, even if it is just a notebook, is important for middle school kids.  I can't wait to see how these notebooks affect my teaching and their learning!