What is an Interactive Notebook?
Interactive notebooks are a tool to get important information on the page using more of the student’s senses and more of their brain. They typically consist of a spiral or composition notebook in which information is added in a variety of ways. This can include guided notes, timelines, vocabulary flaps and other foldables.
[rtoc_mokuji title=”” title_display=”” heading=”” list_h2_type=”” list_h3_type=”” display=”” frame_design=”” animation=””]
The notebooks can look different depending on the age and ability of the students. Nothing needs to be fancy. In fact, I personally hate the fancy stuff. Sure it looks cute, but it is difficult to cut out and can take forever. For. Ev. Errrrr!
The thing I love the most about the notebook is that it is easy to modify based on student ability. I can have a template with a blank notes page for most of my students and then I can give a completed page of notes for my students who struggle with note taking or have illegible handwriting. This way everyone gets a copy of the notes.
Organizing Your Interactive Notebook
FYI: I only endorse things that I've personally used or have come highly recommended from my teacher friends and family and think they may be helpful to you. If you buy anything mentioned using my Amazon referral links, I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Some teachers hold much more true to a traditional interactive notebook than I do, but I have found over the years that, for me personally, it is not worth the time and effort to keep a table of contents in the front of my notebook. I also don’t take the time to number the pages. Instead, I will show the students the note page I want them to look at, since interactive notebooks are a highly visual medium, it is easy for the students to spot the page I want them to look at in their notebooks.
I have had too many students struggle to set the table of contents up correctly at the beginning of the year and have failed to maintain it throughout the year. Basically the table of contents and numbering of the notebook pages became one more thing to manage. Now I just have the students turn to the next blank page, which is pretty easy to find because it is the one that doesn’t have any papers glued to it yet.
My notebooks are nothing fancy, more guided notes and visual information to cut and glue into the notebook. My thought is that the information we are discussing is so important, my students will remember it better because we engaged with the material in a multi-sensory way.
Do You Grade Your Notebooks?
No.
I do not take the time to grade the notebooks, my attitude is less is more. I want the information to go into my students heads and I feel they will be more likely to learn the information using a variety of note taking strategies, especially guided notes. I don’t care if their notes are neat, colored in or not, I just want to make sure they have the correct information glued into their notebook.
What I do not want is one more thing to have to manage and grade. Everything related to interactive notebooks takes place during my reading lessons during the school day.
When student cut, color and glue their notes into their notebooks, I walk around the room to make sure everyone is following the directions . . . and that is it. I am not collecting these at all. I might ask to look at one student’s notebook here or there throughout the year, but I am not giving these a grade.
I hope you notice the theme here. The thing that I want is to use interactive notebooks to help instruction and learning to be more engaging, no one more thing for me to manage. You too can live in a world where you can have more student engagement and less teacher management!
Interactive Reading Notebook Resources I Love to Use
Here are the interactive notebooks that I have purchased from Teachers Pay Teachers and have found really helpful over the years. I do not know any of these people/stores personally and do not get anything from recommending them. I just find it helpful to have a list of resources that are a good starting place to get more information and resources.
Lovin Lit
I do not personally know Erin from Lovin’ Lit, but I feel I am a much better reading teacher because of the amazing resources she has shared on Teachers Pay Teachers. Lovin’ Lit’s Reading Literature Notebook was one of the first things I purchased on TPT and I use it every year. I love not only the notes that she includes, but the way she has structured the entire thing, including YouTube links and clarifications to share with the students, makes teaching reading fun. I have personally used and recommend these interactive notebooks by Lovin’ Lit-
- Interactive Reading Literature Notebook– If you only buy one thing on TPT, I think you might find your money well spent purchasing this gem. I love, love, love her resources for teaching elements of plot. Her notes are creative, effective and fun. I really enjoy teaching the elements of plot to my fifth graders using these notebook resources.
- Interactive Reading Informational Text Notebooks– I feel really well prepared to help my students understand the difference between main idea and topic sentence. I also feel like my students have a really strong understanding of the different text structures. The practice articles are engaging and visually really helpful for all of my readers.
- Interactive Poetry Notebook– This is another fantastic resource. I feel like this product is a great start to teach poetry and figurative language. More engaging lessons are included for figurative language. I love the visual aspect of the simile, metaphor, hyperbole and personification notes.
- She also has an interactive Grammar Notebook and Writing notebook, which are great, but I haven’t used those as much throughout the school year as these staples.
Peanut Circus
I love their ‘less mess’ interactive notebooks. They have thoughtfully included notes that students need to cut out and glue into their notebooks. This is great when you would like to try interactive notebooks, but don’t have much time throughout the day or period to do interactive notes. Here are the interactive notebooks that I have personally used and recommend from Peanut Circus-
- Less Mess Figurative Language & Poetry Interactive Notebook Activities– These figurative language notes combined with Lovin’ Lit’s poetry notebook makes me feel like I can do amazing things when teaching figurative language. The notes are structured in such a way that students understand and see what each type of figurative language looks like as well as support the ever loving doodlers in my room by giving them a chance to create figurative language word art for each type of figurative language (simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, idiom).
- Interactive Notebook Study Skills
- Interactive Notebook Fiction
Mandy Neal
I have used Mandy’s vocabulary interactive notebook to support my vocabulary instruction. She has tons of stems for Greek and Latin Roots as well as prefixes and suffixes. This is a great notebook for visual supports of vocabulary notes. The only, teensy bit of a challenge that comes with this amazing resource, is finding the stem in an easy to grab manner. There is so much information in this product that it might take a bit of time to find the stems that you need. It’s a good problem to have, but one that I haven’t found a great workaround for.
Check Out My Other Engaging Vocabulary Posts
Teaching Syllables in a Fun and Interesting Way
Making Words Teaching Strategy
How to Teach Greek and Latin Roots
The Magic of the Teacher Read Aloud
The Importance of Teaching Idioms Throughout the Year
Looking For More Resources for Teaching Reading?
Check out these posts-
Flashback Should Be Taught Before Foreshadowing When Teaching Reading
Teaching Narrator and Point of View
How to Find Good Independent Reading Books for Students
Teach Students to Abandon Books They Don’t Enjoy
Executive Functioning and Teaching Reading in the Classroom
You Need to Do a Teacher Read Aloud
Read Harry Potter Aloud In Your Classroom
What About You?
Have you tried interactive notebooks? If you want to try it out but don’t want to commit to making any purchases, you can search on TPT for ‘free interactive notebooks + subject’ you are looking for. Let me know how it goes!
