“Disengagement is the root of many students’ learning problems.” Edmunds & Bauserman

An engagement strategy/tool I used in the classroom and continue to use with adults today is utilizing interactive notebooks.  Wist (n.d.) explains, “The reasoning behind interactive notebooks originated with instructional strategies such as note taking, concept mapping, and organization of information as well as brain research about how students learn best” (p. 5).   Kane (2011) also discusses the need to engage and motivate our students.  He talks about the necessity to use our text in better ways.  The text in our classrooms should be a resource and not something to memorize (p. 28).  I often told my students, our goal is for learning to occur not information to be memorized!  I would explain that we must have seven to fifteen encounters with the content before we can store it and have learning occurring.  To help with these multiple encounters, I utilized reader’s/writer’s interactive notebooks.  Instead of merely taking notes, the students interact with the information.  Not only did these notebooks help with engagement, but also they increased student retention!

Kane, S. (2011). Literacy and learning in the content areas (3rd ed.). Scottsdale, AZ:

Holcomb Hathaway.

Wist, C.  (n.d.).  Putting it all together; understanding the research behind interactive

notebooks.  Retrieved

from http://tccl.rit.albany.edu/knilt/images/d/d0/Interactive_Notebooks_Research.pdf

Interactive notebooks can take on many forms.  Here are just a few of my favorites…

Composition books are durable and the perfect size notebook.  This interactive notebook is used with instructing teachers about Step Up to Writing.

Cover of a Student’s interactive notebook using a spiral notebook (Morgan Ernesti, Milford Elementary 5th/6th).  

Second Grade Team at Seward Elementary uses a folder with clear sleeves for writer’s notebooks.  The sleeves are used for interchangeable anchor charts.  

Writing Process-

One of my favorite interactive notebook pages! By teaching our students the writing process and modeling tools for each step, our students can become independent writers. This is very effective with a writer’s workshop framework. The left side illustrates the steps in the writing process. Under each flap, we record the tools we might use during that step. I also like to have the students draw a picture on the front of the flap to represent that step in the writing process. We can easily modify this for our K-2 students. Let me know if you are interested in how?

Step Up to Writing Accordion Essay-

If students are able to construct a solid paragraph then writing an essay is made easy by Step Up to Writing’s accordion essay. This specific interactive notebook page was used with students 5^th -9^th grade.

Step Up to Writing Informal Outlines-

A quick informal outline about Thanksgiving Break was so easy to make in our writer’s notebook. (5^th/6^th Morgan Ernesti, Milford Elementary School) Informal outlines work great for interacting with text and also taking notes in all content areas.

Parts of Speech in Writer’s Notebook- Understanding and working with Nouns

Seward 2^nd Grade team shared this with me. Not only does this integrate grammar into the students’ writing, but it also gives the students a great resource to refer back to during writer’s workshop!

People that matter:

Places that matter:

Things that matter:

Use Step Up to Writing’s informal outline to help facilitate your expectations for show and tell.  As the year progresses, you can add another big idea/star or additional pinks/evidence! This is why I love Step Up to Writing, actual tools that help our students organize their thinking, writing, and speaking!

Here ya go… Implementing grammar into our own writing!  This interactive page was completed with a 5th-grade class.  It reminds the students how to analyze a paragraph. With this tool, students are not only working on revising their writing but also applying grammar knowledge.  

The Seward 4th Grade Team uses this foldable with students to describe the components of their Writer’s Workshop.

Finn Puffin searches for the Perfect Words or Wow Words.  So we wanted to have a place in the students’ interactive notebooks to keep track of some of these words.  When you open Finn’s Beak there is a place for Wow Words.  

Students love to add Wow Words in Finn’s Beak.  They then utilize this page when writing in their journals or crafting a story.  The beak becomes a mini word wall.

Many variations can be implemented.  The 2nd Grade team at York is going to use it as a thesaurus to help build vocabulary.  Each month they will select an overused word like great.  They plan on writing great on the front of the beak and placing more powerful words for great on the inside of the beak.  When students use great orally or in their writing you just might here a 2nd Grade teacher say, “Show me the beak!”

Teaching students to make inferences has always been a difficult task for me. Mainly because I cannot give them an actual tool to help with this skill, and my students do not always have the background knowledge to make an inference. It really comes down to a lot of modeling and practice. So I have been working with teachers to increase making our thinking visible while making inferences.  I love what we are doing to model and practice this challenging skill. Once a week for a bell ringer, we give the students a picture to glue in their interactive notebook. We encourage them to use a T Chart to write down what they see in the picture and what they know about the subject. Then, they write their inference.

Our local shop teacher, Mr. Hass, was kind enough to cut our composite books in half.  They make the perfect mini interactive notebooks.  Some classroom uses include a mentor sentence interactive book and vocabulary/word wall log.