Interactive notebooks have been around the public school scene for quite awhile. I have found articles going back to 2010 that talk about them. But I really haven't seen much about them in the homeschooling community where lapbooking and notebooking still shine.
As I mentioned in my other post, interactive notebooks are a wonderful blend of lapbooking and notebooking. You still get all the interactive, crafty parts of the lapbook, but it is all combined neatly in a spiral bound notebook or composition notebook.
So what exactly is an interactive notebook? It is a notebook that students can take notes in a traditional way from what the teacher presents in class. They can copy the notes from the whiteboard, from a handout or a text book. They can take notes from the class instruction and the teacher's lectures. This is the new information that the teacher wants them to learn.
By interacting with the information they have learned, students will better internalize the material. Many times in an interactive notebook, students will be given a variety of foldable booklets to help them make their notes. But just having foldable pieces does not make it an interactive notebook! It is allowing the student to make their own notes and write down their own examples based on what they have already learned in class that makes it an interactive notebook. This helps the student process the information and truly make it their own. Below you can see examples from my student's rainforest animal notebook.
So how do you make an interactive notebook? If you are like me, you stock up on notebooks during the summer when the prices drop to twenty-five cents or less. I can use these for my children as interactive notebooks. They can keep one for each subject or topic. My first attempt at creating one was for a unit on rainforest animals that my son was studying. I thought we did a pretty good job, but I wasn't sure what to do with the rest of the notebook once he had completed his handful of pages on this topic. So I did some research.
I found some great ways to organize the notebook so he can continue to use it for other types of animals, or other science subjects.
Have your child (or you can do it depending on his/her age) number each page of the notebook before you begin.
Glue a blank table of contents at the front of the book. As your child adds notes and booklets to the book, he or she can list the topics in the table of contents along with the page numbers
Invest in some page tabs. You can make them yourself, or the Post-it people have some nice ones that are easy to use. Use the page tabs to divide up the book into sections.
Now at the end of the year, you can file the notebook for your records. Easy as that.
If you would like to try out interactive notebooks, I have the rainforest animal unit that my son completed for sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. It has original non-fiction readers about 9 different animals that live in the rainforest. Each animal story is written at two different reading levels. They are perfect for 1st-3rd grade. There are also mini booklets and other items that can be cut out and added to your interactive notebook.
Happy Learning,
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