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

Interactive Notebooks - Again

We have been busy this week reading a novel and have been using our social studies interactive notebooks so I have neglected my language arts one this week.  Have I mentioned that I love my interactive notebooks and truly believe that my students are happy to have such a structured approach to learning.  AND...that they have a valuable resource to refer back to when needed.  I also love the fact that pages are not falling out of their notebooks or have just simply disappeared (those are some of the problems I had when using binders and having students place notes in these binders). 

I am a very visual learner, so I am going to include a few more pictures in this short but sweet post.  I am reminded of an acronym I have been using with my students when working on summarizing...KISS It!  Keep It Short and Simple.  I learned of this acronym when I did a stint for AT&T before landing a real teaching job. 

No laughing at my horrible artwork please...it is the content we are interested in viewing!

This is a notes page about the Elements of a Short Story...notice how each page is titled and dated. We start off day one and number each page. Each time we complete an entry in our notebooks, the date and title are entered as well.

This is a Sensory Figure I found at Mrs. Gannon's Wordpress site.  She has a bunch of pages dedicated to interactive notebooks and social studies.  Remember...I am not an artist! I put many things like this in my notebook so my students can refer back to them as needed throughout the school year.  After discovering Pinterest, I realized these would be considered types of anchor charts.

This is a foldable created using the 12 Powerful Words.  This is a list of words that occur most often on student questions, especially test.  I tried to get a picture of a couple of the tabs lifted where you can see the word on top and the definition is under that flap.

This is a list of sample character traits I found and we glued in our notebooks.  This is a great "thinking started" for students when they are stumped.  My students probably refer back to this page more than any other in their notebook. 

This is just a set of questions related to the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros.  I found this idea somewhere on the web to create the questions in a strip that were glued to the side of the page (can be either on the left or right - on the right here so it doesn't cover up the holes of the notebook page).  Students were required to answer the questions in a complete sentence - this is the page where I modeled that expectation.

This just shows a page where we took notes (8 Ways Characters are Revealed) and we still had 1/2 a page leftover.  So...at some point we needed to add a list of common helping verbs in their notebook.  Why waste space, right?  We just cut the longer list in half and glued it to this "free" space in our notebooks.

Just some notes on theme, but wanted to show that when mistakes are made, we just cross them out and keep on rolling. 

Just a horrible graphic organizer where students were telling about different aspects of their life.  This was in conjunction with reading Knots in My Yo-Yo String by Jerry Spinelli.  This is his autobiography.

This is a close activity on the Elements of Autobiography.  It is a good idea, but is too crowded.  Next year, this will be divided into two pages and have more room for students to write.  This was created during the whole left side reflection/right side input side.  Like I reported in an earlier post, I scrapped that idea and just use the next available page - what a great revelation this was for me!