More on Interactive Notebooks

I am going to post a few more pictures of my language arts interactive notebook that I took a couple of weeks ago.  I have been posting a few with each blog, but am going to post several more of them on this entry.   It has been what seems like a long week, so I am going to KISS this post!  That is an acronym I teach my students:  Keep It Short and Simple.  We KISS a lot of stuff when appropriate!


This is a double bubble map we used while reading The Cay by Theodore Taylor.

This is a summarization strategy I found online call "the incredible shrinking notes" where students start out writing a summary of a reading selection on the large index card.  Students are then given the medium sized card and have to take the information from the large card and condense it onto the medium sized card.  Finally, students are given the small card and must then take the information from the medium sized card and condense it down either further onto the small card.  This is a great way for students to get to the main point/idea of a selection.

This is a brief biography of Theodore Taylor we glued in our notebooks when we were reading The Cay, one of his awesome books that can be integrated into either the study of South America or Central America or World War II.  It also has great examples of dialect.

This is a foldable on poetry terms.

Notes on figurative language with some color coding to make the notes user friendly.

Poetry notes also color coded to make them easier to use and more helpful.

More poetry notes...notice an example is created with each type of poem so students have a reference point to refer to when needed.  Once I teach poetry, it is fair game to require students to respond to any type of reading in poetry form.  I teach poetry between Thanksgiving and Christmas each year, which gives students an opportunity to use their poetry skills for the whole second semester.

Another page of poetry notes.

Our last page of poetry notes.  Note the "I Am" poem rules taped into student notebooks and then our class example written underneath. 

We used "Winter Morning Poem" and a sheet of generic poetry analysis questions to aid in comprehension.  The questions are taped into the notebook so when students open them, they can see both poem and questions/answers together.

This is just another poem where we were marking the rhyme scheme, lines, and stanzas. 

Really?

Really?  That has become our new catch phrase in my class this year.  I suppose it is inevitable since I use that word often all of the time.  I just have to shake my head and laugh about it when I hear a student say it.  At this point in the year, I honestly do not even have a chance to get the word in my brain before one of my students have already uttered it in some sarcastic tone.  I am so glad that they "get" me and my humor - that was a concern when I moved from 7th grade to 6th grade this year (actually not by me, but by a fellow 6th grade teacher).  I did not let it bother me very much, she is a newer teacher and I HAVE taught 2nd and 5th grades prior to middle school.

Anyway, I am going to share one funny from my class right before spring break before I post some more interactive notebook pictures.  I hope you are ready for it...it IS epic and was a proud moment for the sarcastic teacher that I am.

Let me set the stage...I had a female student who was leaving about 1/2 hour early.  We were dismissing at noon that day (and it was my birthday).  Names have been changed to protect the innocent. 

John (boy student):  Sally, please take me with you.
Sally (girl student):  Sorry John, I didn't bring my leash today.
Me:  Laughing out Loud in the back of the room (with the rest of the class) and issuing a proud fist pump or two.

Ok, so now on to more interactive notebooks.  Have I mentioned how much I love these things?  They really have helped keep me focused and centered this year.  I really wish someone would write a book about them to be used in a language arts classroom.

This is a foldable we created on Knots in My Yo-yo String by Jerry Spinelli.  It is from a Dinah Zike book called Notebooking Central Notebook Foldables Strategies for Comprehending and Interacting with Informational Text.

This is just a practice paragraph where each student wrote their own, but the neat thing is the sticky note at the bottom.  I figured out how to print on a couple different sizes of sticky notes.  Each student was given a sticky note to use to check their paragraphs.  Love these!!

This is a window foldable that was created using another Dinah Zike book, Notebook Foldables for Spirals, Binders, & Composition Books.  This was on changing singular nouns to plurals.

This is just a summarization page from out notebooks.  We worked on different summarization strategies for students to use.

Another summarization strategy glued into our notebooks taken from our SIOP training.

And here is another foldable from Dinah Zike for students to use for summarizing.  In addition, I found a story pyramid summary that students can use in their summarization efforts.

 Hope this post has not completely bored you to death.  Stay tuned for more pictures...and details on an AWESOME find that I well...found...to help make students notebooks just a little more organized.  Did I mention how much I LOVE being organized???