Beginning (Again) Interactive Notebooks

The weekend is finally here!

Oh my, what a long week!!!

This week, we had conferences, Valentine's Day and a full moon! Too much in one week if you ask me!
So, we did start our new notebooks, (I posted about those last time right here) but didn't do as much with them on Thursday and Friday.

Monday was strictly our decorating day.  This time, since I now teach in a pretty affluent school, I had the students bring in their own notebooks if they wanted and I had some for the kids who didn't bring new ones.  We are using just a one subject spiral notebook. I've tried the composition notebooks, but I don't think those give enough the student enough space because we glue in a lot of modified practice work (aka worksheets) and unless you are always folding those in half, there is just not enough room. I've also heard of using spiral notebooks which I think is a great idea, but I don't like to have to do all the hole punching with my piece of junk three hole puncher, so spirals work best for us (me).

I got out new markers and a ton of stickers and said, Have fun and make it yours! Of course they loved this.  Here was one finished product…

Notice the blue tape on the bottom. I will put a little tape on the side, too, but just didn't get time, to make a pocket. I saw on Pinterest how you could just take the first two pieces of paper and fold them over and tape them down to make a pocket! Such a great idea!!! But I can not find that for the life of me! Please let me know if this idea was yours because it certainly wasn't mine!

This pocket will be so handy for holding our baggies of spelling words, etc.

This took all of the time on Monday.  That's all for today. See you next time!!!

Interactive Notebooks

So, I've been gone awhile.

A long while.

Well, I have no excuse except I've had writer's block. Bad. I would sit down to write and nothing. Even though I did have lots of things going on, I didn't know how to get it all into print.

So I won't. And I'm going to start fresh today.

So, Hi!!! Nice to see you!



To reacquaint myself to you, I am teaching first grade this year (again) but at a new school. I'd taught first grade for about 12 years before this, but all at the same school. I loved it there, it was just time for a change. My principal was leaving and I wanted to go with her.

So now I'm at my new school and things are going pretty well. Parent issues, truthfully, but I'm not going to dwell on those right now.

What I'd like to talk about are interactive notebooks!  Not so much of a new idea anymore, but I'm constantly trying to make them work in the best way.  I decided to start over.
I just bought these at Target.

I find that buying a new notebook or supplies of some kind really help me get motivated and inspired! I've been reading all I can find online about interactive notebooks and it's really kind of hard to find a whole lot of details when it comes to lower grade notebooks.

So I'm going to kind of have this be my blog topic for a little while. I'm planning to start them over tomorrow. I'll take lots of pics and share with you soon!!!

I'd love to hear from you to know you're still out there, too.

Until next time,