I have received several requests for info from a comment I posted a while back, so I thought I'd share with everybody. We did a VA interactive notebook to teach state history (from 1607 Jamestown settlement to current events). It's a lot of info for the kids to learn and reading it out of the book won't cut it. A couple teachers in my school have used what the county gave us as a resource and changed/added/removed and made our notebooks unique. Here's how/what I did!
Feel free to work with what makes sense...or ask about anything that doesn't!
We keep everything glued into the notebook, we used marble composition books. Our covers were decorated as a collage -- I picked up a ton of travel brochures from Virginia from a rest stop and the kids cut and glued and we covered them with book tape. Some of our pages are workbook pages, some are notes -- most are more fun then that. Everything from illustrations to flow charts of goverment power to pages we glue in that are cloze type paragraphs to word searches and vocabulary matches. THey have 200 pages, this year we used about 160 pages. By the end of the year the kids had to treat them gently because they were so full the bindings would break, but they are so proud of their notebooks. We kept them in ziplocs or folders to protect them.
I think I reversed these from the actual model. But anyway I use the model where the right page is for WOW (Words of Wisdom) and the left page is split horizontally. the top part is RAP (Review and Preview) and the bottom is WIO (Work it out). The WOW side is for notes, information they should learn. RAP is to review what you learned before and ask them to predict what should be learned. WIO is the most fun -- they draw an illustration or a diagram or something of the sort to make their ideas stick. Not every page was RAp/WOW/WIO but that's what made it vary from page to page.
We did specific chapters, had a table of contents in the beginning and created illustrated and colorful "coverpages" (The kids' favorite parts!) for every chapter. I used Post it Durable tabs (the thin ones wear out) for each chapter coverpage so it was easy to use as a reference. At the end of every chapter we glued in, highlighted and reviewed the chapter study guide. This was AWESOME because our parents knew just where to look EVERY TIME it was time for a test.
We even worked on cool foldables (civil war, famous people, contrast and compare cultural landscape through the years, famous documents) and put some of them into the book.
We did this for VA and our district has a lot of information pre-made. It really made it more fun for us! I can send you photos of what our book looks like to give you an idea -- it was a lot of work, but totally worth it becuase EVERYTHING stayed put to be a reference for later.
Lastly, I found a great way to grade it -- every day that you work in it, or they have homework, they get a stamp. Right side up if it's done correctly, directions followed, etc. Sideways if it's partially correct. And upside down if its not complete or done really wrong. At the end of each "chapter" you count the number of stamps up ,sideways, or down to determine their grades. IT's quick and easy!
I would love to get more information on this project! I will be teaching fourth grade in VA this coming year and this sounds like an excellent way to teach state history, since it is such a HUGE amount of information! My e-mail address is khreeves@gmail.com. I'd love to hear more and perhaps see pictures from this project! What district is this in?
This sounds similar to Science Notebooking that we'll be doing this year, also using the composition books, gluing things in, table of contents, etc. Love the idea.
What size of composition books do you use? Lined or unlined? In thinking about Science I was concerned about gluing/taping things in because the books would get so bulky, but maybe using the right size comp. book will help.
What a great idea. I'm going to bring this up to my 4th grade team and see if we can adapt this for New Mexico History. I too would love to see pictures and get more info. My e-mail address is jalancast@yahoo.com.
My guess is you are in Fairfax County (I am too). I think the interactive notebook is so useful and the kids have fun with it. I remember the first year I used them some students thanked me for letting them use colored pencils in their notebooks. If you are in Fairfax I agree with you that the gateways site is SO useful. I just wish the other curriculum departments would step up and have as much as the SS site does.
I would also love to see photoes and get more information. I'm going to bring this up to my 4th grade team and see if we can adapt this for Nevada History and/or science. My e-mail address is quietstormmel at yahoo dot com.
I have done something similar for CA history - the kids, parents, and I love it! I use a regular 3-ring binder, that way pages can be added / taken out and handed in for checking (without collecting the whole notebook) easily. At the end of each unit the students insert their completed unit test that has been run on colored paper - acts as a divider between units (but I like the post it note idea too).
I will be piloting 2 new textbook series this year - I'm hoping I will be able to incorporate the notebook with the pilot!
I had thought of something similar to this, but your idea sounds much better. Would you mind emailing me any further information. My address is andrea.honisko@sbcglobal.net
I am interested in using this with my 4th grade class for Nevada history..I would appreciate pictures and anything else that you can share...also, I am looking for desk top maps of Nevada for my students...do you have any resources that you can share...thanks so much
I am interested in using this with my 4th grade class for Nevada history..I would appreciate pictures and anything else that you can share...also, I am looking for desk top maps of Nevada for my students...do you have any resources that you can share...thanks so much...my e-mail is palciccarol@yahoo.com
I posted the 12 pictures of the notebook -- some random pages as well as a few that help with management -- on snapfish. Click the link below to see them.
Being the visual learner that I am, I cannot thank you enough for posting the pictures of your interactive notebook. I have been trying to imagine what this would look like for fourth grade social studies, and now I know!! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!
I can't seem to get the link to open for the pictures and I REALLY want to see them! Has anyone else had a problem with this? If so, were you able to fix it and how did you do it? I feel that seeing the pictures will help clear up a lot of my questions so I am excited to see them when I can get the link to open!
I know that this is an old post but I needed a reminder of how to do Interactive Notebooks for the last term of school. I wanted to try this years ago and my student teacher mentioned it just the other day. I'm off to order glue - .
I would really appreciate if you could send me some pictures of your notebooks so that I use this idea as soon as I get my classroom. I couldn't open the link to your pictures, it says that they were already deleted. If you don't mind, can you send them to me at sindygar@sbcglobal.net.
Hi Margaret,
I teach at a K-12 charter school. As a member of the school-wide writing committee I am searching for information and examples of interactive notebooks. We will be requiring students in all grades to use interactive notebooks for science and social studies.
I really appreciate the information you posted explaining the notebooks you use and was hoping I could get some pictures to share with our teachers. Our school follows a Direct Instruction format and this is our first departure away from some of the more scripted writing programs, so many of our teachers are very apprehensive. I know that if I can not explain, but also show them, what it looks like, they will be more willing to jump in.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give. Please send any information to dbardes#aol.com
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06-29-2006, 07:13 PM
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