Today was day 4 of working on our Interactive Student Notebooks (ISNs) and my students are really beginning to own their work. I heard several of them say, "Ooooh, Mrs., look at my book. It's so pretty!" Or, "Wow! I'm so proud of it!" Yay!
I have to admit, I was so intimidated by the thought of just starting the process. I bought a book about interactive notebooks last year, but never even cracked it open because it seemed so daunting. This summer, though, I came across something on Pinterest that made me compelled to try. It was a pin by A Teacher's Treasure; I followed it and began poking around the blog, eventually finding a great video tutorial about ISNs. http://www.ateacherstreasure.com/ I also checked out The Middle School Mouth's blog (http://themiddleschoolmouth.blogspot.com/2012/05/interactive-notebooks-yet-again.html) and found a bunch of great inspiration there.
Here's what we've done so far.
Day One: I showed my students a few websites about ISNs and gave them their cover sheets and inside cover sheets. They had class time to personalize and decorate them. I told them to make them colorful and creative. Whatever they didn't finish in class, they took home to complete. I showed them where we would be storing their ISNs (STAR Books).
Day Two: We glued and taped our cover sheets and inside cover sheets. I handed out the first Table of Contents and had them add color before taping in to the first page of the notebook. I explained how we would add future TOC pages.
Day Three: The students received their STAR Book Guidelines (from A Teacher's Treasure's TPT store). I had kids come into the room and start reading them in small groups. Prior to class, I typed out 20 question that cover important information about the STAR Book and cut them into strips. To foster a little bit of healthy competition and student engagement, I had the teams compete against each to see who could answer the most questions correctly. I would ask a question and then the teams would search their guidelines packet and try to answer first. It was fun! I had the students take the packets home and get them signed by their parents. Their task was to bring the packet back the next day. I then gave the kids about 20 minutes to cut out pictures from magazines to make a collage on the back cover of their notebooks that represented who they are and their interests. I handed out a small manila envelope and had them store their pictures in it.
Day Four: Today the kids spent time gluing their collages on teh back cover of their notebooks. I then "laminated" the books using packing tape. Afterwards, we glued and taped the envelopes to the back inside cover. This provides a place to store their flash cards, Quiz-Quiz-Trade cards, etc.
Tomorrow I plan on giving them time to tape their STAR Book guideline packet onto page 3 and to create their first left hand process page. Earlier today I made an exemplar in my Master Copy and plan on using it to show the kids what they can do. I expect to have to do a lot of scaffolding when it comes to processing, but it'll be fun and my students will be adding to their repertoire on a regular basis.
Overall, I'm very excited about our ISNs and feel pretty positive about how it's going so far. Stay tuned for further reports of our progress. :)
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