ISN - Links and More

This post is way overdue and I must admit should have probably been one of the first that I posted to help everyone understand my journey with interactive notebooks in language arts.  As I have said in the past, there were not many resources available at the beginning of my journey with using interactive notebooks in language arts classes.  So...I relied on one of my great friends, Google, to help me search and search and search (you get the picture).  What I did find were many sites and bits of information about using ISNs in social studies, science, and even math.  Being the creative thieving teacher that I am, I took what information I could find and "made it fit" my needs.

I had saved several of these informative sites to my favorites on my computer.  Some of the links still work while some can no longer be found.  Anyway, I did a quick Google search and found a few more sites that I felt had information that could be used to help understand ISNs and also help someone considering using ISNs in their classroom make an informed decision.  I also snapped a few pictures of the Dinah Zike foldables books that I have used in my ISNs over the past couple of years.

One thing that I recommend you do if using ISNs is that you create a teacher notebook as you go through the school year...completing pages/assignments as students do.  This helps to keep everyone on the same page and you have a great record of what students need to do when they are absent.  They can grab your notebook and use it to get caught up and have a guide for where to glue pages and what was missed.  I would also suggest that you create a separate notebook for each class that you teach.  Modeling for each class is so much easier if you just start over instead of showing them your notebook from the previous class. 

Click on the goldish words below to visit that web page.  You may have to do a little searching on that page to find the information related to interactive notebooks - I tried to point you to the main page of each site.  Each foldables book is linked to the book at the Dinah Zike store, just click the picture and it will take you to that specific store page.

History Alive (the birth of interactive notebooks)
Interactive Notebooks (a wiki-space with many logistics)
A Teacher's Treasure (Mor Zrihen's blog all about ineractive notebooks)
Mr. Roughton 2.0 (many assignments that can be adapted for ISN use)
Mrs. Campbell
Stirling English
Mrs. Edwards
Ms. Perez
Science Notebooking
Middle School Science
Teaching Social Studies (this is one of my favorites with very useful info by Mrs. Gannon)
Huff English
Joseph Hill (just found this one today...a new favorite with TONS of info)
EHOW (quick tutorial)
Setting up the Interactive Notebook (Slideshare powerpoint)

Click on the picture to go to the Dinah Zike store for more information about this book. 

Click on the picture to go to the Dinah Zike store for more information about this book.

Click on the picture to go to the  Dinah Zike store for more information on this book.

Click on the picture to go to the Dinah Zike store for more information on this book.

Click on the picture to go to the Dinah Zike store for more information about this book.

I hope all of this information is helpful.  Good luck with your interactive notebook journey.  I will try to answer any questions that I can, if possible.

Randy

More on My Social Studies Interactive Notebook

This post includes more pictures of my social studies interactive notebooks we have used this school year.  You will see most of the information in this post are foldables from Dinah Zike and mine is lacking color like the students. 

Global grid system notes

Maps versus globes Venn diagram

Parts of a map foldable

Vocabulary to accompany our textbook

Landforms found above and below sea level foldable

Types of landforms foldable

Cornell notes on South America from our textbook

This is a bad copy of the foldables notebook I used. Hope this helps all of those who were wondering where the book came from and what it looked like.

Inside my Social Studies Interactive Notebook

Some had mentioned they would like to see inside my social studies interactive notebook so I finally remembered to bring it home and snap some pictures.  It is not as creative as my language arts one!  I used some foldables from Dinah Zike, some I found online, and some great units from InspirEd Educators. 

This is my first year teaching social studies (in middle school, in my career, and in 6th grade).  I teach in NC and our state will be implementing the Common Core starting next school (2012-2013).  In addition, all of our other curriculums have changed to what they call Essential  Standards.  I was put on the Social Studies Essential Standards training team for our county. 

Needless to say, I was panicked and lost at the beginning of the school year.  I started out with the five themes of geography and landforms and then moved to South America which was found in our old textbook while we read The Cay in language arts class.  Since being put on the training team, the team was told after the first nine weeks that we were allowed encouraged to convert to the new essential standards curriculum.  With that came a complete loss for me.  I had no social studies materials to start with, but the change meant I had absolutely nothing, not even the old textbook.  I headed to the Internet to search for materials, lessons, actually anything I could get my hands on and discovered InspirED Educators. 

InspirEd Educators was like this amazing find for me (and in no way am I affiliated or paid to promote their products)!  They have several thematic units on ancient world history which is what our new essential standards is for 6th grade.  These lessons contain a variety of hands on activities, primary and secondary sources, whole group/small group lessons, research projects, and collaborative projects just to name a few. 

So...long story short:  my social studies notebooks started out more interactive but then became a place to glue all the lesson from InspirEd Educators as act as a textbook for social studies.  Here are a few pictures to get started.

The table of contents for my social studies interactive notebook.

Five Themes of Geography flip book foldable.  We took notes on each tab for that theme.  Notice the capital/bold letters spell MR. HELP...this was our acronym to help remember the five themes (found on the Internet somewhere).

One of the tabs from our Five Themes of Geography flip book foldable.

Longitude and latitude foldable using a paper plate and then glued into our notebooks.

Here is the paper plate foldable unfolded in our notebook.