What’s your opinion on interactive notebooks or journals? Personally, I love using them with my upper grades students. They’re a great way to teach a skill by encouraging students to come up with their own examples. Plus, students love cutting and gluing.
I guide my students during the setup of their own notebooks by showing them mine first. Visuals are a great way to offer additional support, especially if you work with emergent bilinguals. I find that using the projector and Smartboard to show my students where to cut and glue is the most ideal setup for me. Find what works for you!
READING & GRAMMAR
I focus on two subjects when it comes to using interactive journals: reading and grammar. I love teaching grammar and I find that exposing my students to these foldables early on holds me accountable to teach grammar, too.
Obviously, I always make sure my students know the grammar skills beforehand. Sometimes I offer them examples for each term, so they can write them under the liftable tabs. As they get more comfortable with using their journals, I have them add their own examples.
Reading interactive journals are set up differently because they do require more student input. The responses under these tabs are longer. I organize reading foldables by genre. Additionally, I teach my students to use them with a book, text, poem, etc. Also, it’s ok to reuse the same foldable with a new text. There are no rules to this. It’s all about doing what works for your students.
What happens to the journals when students have filled out all the liftable tabs? Great question! Students will continue to use them because they serve as a reference. Think of them as mini anchor charts that your students created for their future selves. Ideally, you want to use interactive journals throughout the entire school year, just not every day.
Do you think your students are ready to start setting up their journals?
TIPS & REMINDERS
Here are just a few things to keep in mind when deciding to introduce interactive journals to your students:
- Don’t re-invent the wheel. Make one master notebook that you can use to model with year after year.
- Be patient. Interactive journals will take time to setup. It will also take weeks, even months to go through every foldable. It really depends on your pacing guide aka your curriculum.
- Get creative. You can print the foldables on white paper and have your students color them OR you can print them directly on colored paper. There is no right or wrong way.
- Teach first. Students should be familiar with the skill before you hand them the foldable. Think of interactive journals as a way to review or re-teach a skill.
I hope these tips and reminders will help make the transition easier for you. If you’re interested in purchasing my reading + grammar interactive journal bundle, click here.
Comment your questions below!
Happy teaching,
