Interactive Reading Notebooks

What have we been up to lately? Grammar notebooks! Well, my students don't actually have grammar notebooks, they have reading notebooks. In our reading interactive notebooks we keep reading foldables, grammar foldables, poetry, guided reading notes, and writing/thinking organizers. As you can imagine, we are in these notebooks multiple times a day; which is why our super cute ribbon bookmarks come in so handy.

I have used interactive notebooks ever since I started teaching three years ago, but this year I really wanted to focus on using a reading and math interactive notebook. I have dabbled with math foldable's before, but I had never done a reading interactive notebook. My focus with interactive notebooks in the past was social studies and science. So with this in mind, I set to work over the summer creating all sorts of foldables to make it easy for myself to stick to my goal and actually use an interactive notebook in reading and math.

Below you will find pictures of my reading interactive notebook (stay tuned for pictures of my math interactive notebook). As I said before I keep everything reading in our reading interactive notebooks, which is a lot, but I wanted to make sure everything was kept in one place since I was just starting out. I had a fear of under-using the notebooks and eventually giving up on my goal with them. I plan on fine-tuning for next year and maybe having separate notebooks for certain topics. As for now, things are going swimmingly. Since there is so much that goes into this notebook, students are really taking ownership. At first it was like pulling teeth to get my students to color or add their own flair. But now, they ask if they can go back and add to assignments if they have free time.

Utilizing the interactive notebooks has also helped me feel more confident about my lessons. When I follow up a mini lesson with an interactive notebook sort or activity, I can quickly walk around and see who understood the concept. Since I created a foldable for every strand before the school year even began, it's really keeping me consistent and accountable. I can't get lazy or make any excuses because it's already done for me. Not to mention, the students ask if they know we're starting a new skill and I don't whip out a foldable eventually.

I am enjoying seeing our notebooks grow; although I am thinking we're going to need a volume two by the end of the second quarter. I will try my best to leave links to where I found certain activities, a lot of my grammar or reading notebook foldables can be found in my store.

Enjoy!

Verb Tree

 

All About Bats Close Reading (24/7 Teacher)

Syllable Sort

 Super Verb

 

Article Notes

Polar Bears Writing (topic, detail, and closing sentences are colored)

Subject Verb Agreement

Irregular Plural Notes

Poem of the Week

Making Connections

Context Clues

Text Features

 

Blank iPad 

(We will be using this for our biographies. Students will draw pictures in the app boxes to create a timeline of their life events and write their story behind the flap.)

 

Biographies

(Students will draw a picture of the person on the pocket and write about them on the pull-out tab.)

Sequencing

Fiction Elements

 

Folktales Pocket

(They LOVE this!)

Fiction & Nonfiction Sort

Compare and Contrast

Our notebooks are getting fat!

Interactive Reading Notebook!

Happy almost end of summer! This is my last week of complete freedom. Next week the school opens up for teachers to begin setting up their rooms and the following week is work week. With the anticipation of a new school year, I have been thinking a lot about how I want to structure and improve my literacy block. I thought I would share the interactive notebook that my students and I use to keep track of our skills. The pictures below are from the notebook that I keep along with the students. We also will include grammar activities and notes in our notebooks, but the pictures are just of the reading portion. Enjoy!

What do you use in your room? I would love to hear what you are doing or how I can improve.

These are just some of the pages from our notebook. If you are interested in finding out more about the reading notebook, you can visit my TPT store. The complete list of the activities the notebook includes is below. 

-fiction/nonfiction
-author's purpose
-elements of fiction
-main idea
-making predictions
-making connections
-sequencing
-cause and effect
-ask and answer questions
-problem and solution
-text features
-folktales
-context clues
-drawing conclusions
-biography
-autobiography
-compare and contrast

Have a great day!

Reading Ten Pin Party

I am so excited to be joining Ashley from Just Reed for her Ten Pin linky party. I just love sharing my amazing Pinterest pins and this week the theme is reading.

 

Here's what I've found (click on the pictures to go to the links):

1. This guided reading anecdotal notes form is my new favorite thing.Well, at least as far as school pins go anyway. I always have a terrible time keeping track of all of my anecdotal notes throughout the year. I am always thinking of a new, better, easier, faster way to note student progress which leads to me changing recording methods at least 4-5 times throughout the year. This year I'm using this one sheet all-year, or at the very least, I'm planning to use this sheet all year. I will write the week each skill was taught after the skill and I will check it off and put the date by the checkbox when the student masters the skill. I plan on taking more detailed notes on the back of the sheet and adding pages for that as I need them.Voila! Notes and data tracking all in one.

2. This pin has ideas for interactive reader's notebooks, which I think is an awesome idea.

3.This is a pin for a site called Readworks. This site really does have a lot of amazing resources and lessons.

4. How awesome would a reading fair be? I'm totally not a teacher who's into projects, but I feel an extra credit activity coming on!

5. Glued-in prompts for writing journals or reading notebooks based on mentor texts and 6-trait writing lessons

6. Literacy work stations task cards- these would be nice to switch things up during Daily 5

7. I really like this centers board! I usually put a schedule up during Daily 5 and Math Workshop on my Promethean board, but when my board is not working for some random reason, it makes switching centers a hassle.

8. I love the idea of a book series alphabet. Maybe I could stick post-its or stars under each letter as a student reads one of the books in the series. My students would be motivated to read all of the books highlighted to get their name on the wall and for bragging rights. Maybe I could even have an end of year party for the students that read one book from each of the series?

9. I used this stoplight questioning with my students this year and they became pros at it! I was attracted to it because it was a simpler version or QAR for my third graders. This strategy really helped students with test taking. They were able to identify the question as green, yellow, or red and then know if they could look back at the text for the answer or if the answer was going to come from their brain.

10. I also used these stop and jot strategies this year, although not as consistently as I would have liked. Students were definitely able to write better summaries when they stopped and jotted things down while reading.

I hope you found some new ideas! Stop by and join the party!

5+ Fabulous Pins

I've been finding so many wonderful things on Pinterest lately and I wanted to share some of my most helpful pins. There is no official Pinterest app but I have an unofficial app for my tablet so I am constantly pinning goodies, which as you may imagine, leads to much inspiration but many unproductive days.

1. K12 Reader: This is a wonderful site for reading worksheets, articles, games, and activities. I enjoy the weekly content-related reading comprehension worksheets by grade-level.



2. How To Make a Bulletin Board Awning from Teacher Stuff



3. Transition Music from Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detectives



4. Organization Tips from Mrs. Terhune's First Grade

5. 100+ Writing Sites from KB Konnected

Other Great Pins

* 50 Ways to Inspire Your Husband

* Bunny Dog

* This is so my dog Teddy!