Warning: This is a LONG post, full of a gazillion pictures! Everything I read and/or hear about interactive notebooks is people asking "how do I do this?" I cannot stress enough that making interactive notebooks has to work for YOU, how YOU decide to use them. For me, in my opinion, teachers just need to do it. Seriously, it seems cliche' but it's true. Do it and then USE them in your classroom. That's the most important thing. When we made a foldable about tax, tip and percent and then students asked me, "How do I find percent?", I would say, "Did you look in your binder first?" It was magical!!! At the end of the year when students were writing to next years students about what they would need to know to survive sixth grade math, many of them said, "Keep your math binder organized and look at your notes first before asking for help." I thought that was powerful! Of course, I would help my students as needed, but they needed to try on their own first. I want you to see what a "real" notebook looks like from beginning to end. It's not perfect, but I am proud of what my students and I made this year and I can use this to improve. This was my 3rd year using them for 6th grade math and it is the best. I want you to see the failures and the successes. I took pictures of pages side by side and inside of foldables for you to see. ENJOY! This was my first day of school activity. It's how students learn about me and how I learn about them. Page 2 is guidelines and expectations. Didn't quite get everything filled in. I am going to unit Table of Contents next year. These are state reference materials. Every student is allowed to use this on their state test, so we use them all year. They are very comfortable with them before the test. Left side: Student work using divisibility rules Right Side: Divisibility Notes Left side: Writing in Math!!!! This one is from Live Love Math There's a whole set! Many foldables are just cut paper and students write everything! Some foldables are typed notes and they cut and paste everything. Left Side: I read a story and students had to write the integer I described. We did the right side first for notes, then left side activity. Left side: After completing the notes on the right side, students completed their own trees. Yes, page 22 remained blank. I just had to get over it! Sometimes things are just worksheets. Sometimes notes are on the left and work on the right. Left side: a morning warm up they glued in Left side: another warm up they completed after learning about PEMDAS Students love taking notes on a paper plate. This was a warm up page. They would glue their warm up each day on this page. I kept these because I wanted them to know their warm ups were important, not just busy work. Egads! Another blank page! The foldable on the left is from Laura Candler Page 52 is from 4mula Fun. It's a homework sheet, but I used it in class. Great practice and I wanted them to have access to it for converting. Most popular foldable. It's for integer operation rules. We used this A LOT!!! At the end of the year when we were practicing integers again, I was able to say, "Look on page 60 for the rules". Page 64-66 are from For the Love of Teaching Math. I posted about this activity here. Mean, Median, Mode and Range foldable from 4mula Fun Page 73 and 74 were some of the funnest days I taught. I got the entire lesson from Math = Love and posted about it here. Page 75, I tried a Unit table of Contents and loved it. I posted about it here. I posted about these here. These pages were not blank for my students. When students are absent, I take their notes. Sometimes that means, mine don't get completed. Our very last unit was new information we will teach next year, but at the beginning of the year. It was kind of a "hodge podge" unit. I have just realized that I never posted about pages 90-93. I even found the half written post. Guess I will be completing that soon. Again, these will be concepts taught at the beginning of the school year. I did post about using stickers with my students. They loved it and I will definitely be doing it again. This was it, our notebook. Thanks for making it this far. I hope it shows you reality. Somethings are great and some are not, but I feel very good about the use of interactive notebooks in my classroom and it is something I will definitely continue using with my students. Be sure to check out the July Tried It Tuesday's over at Holly's blog.
