Starting the year with Interactive Notebooking

First Few Activities for Our ISN

So we are going to start off the 7th grade year by focusing on reading strategies  and elements of narratives.  As I am trying to incorporate as much of the Reading Apprenticeship program into my classroom, the notebook is going to be used to help students come prepared to discuss the skills we are learning.  The left side of the notebook will probably have to be finished at home on some occasions (with only 50 minutes we are limited!)

Week 1 plans:

Day 1 - students are going to discuss and reflect what it means to them to read.  They are going to create a definition of what it means to read.  I plan on keeping these definitions and having them reflect later in the year on their definition.  Students will also be doing a student interest survey and learning about me!

Day 2- We are going to create a class set of norms this day.  I want to focus on what students need to feel safe to make mistakes in a classroom atmosphere.  They will have a reading history assignment to complete as well.

Day 3 - Students will be starting their notebooks today!  My plan is to have at least 20 notebooks and just ask that students bring one in to replace the notebook that I gave them.  Or they can pay me for the notebook as well.  We are going to setup the beginning of our notebooks today.  If you would like to see what I am doing to start the notebooks click here.

Day 4- Students will continue to build their ISN and they will share with a partner their reading history assignment.  On this day, students will have been asked to bring in a text that they think this easy for them, but could be considered hard for others.  I am going to be modeling "Think Alouds" this day with the texts that students bring into class.  The hope is to show students that they are readers and what an experienced reader does to make sense of "outside school" texts.

Week 2 Plans

Day 1- Students are starting their daily grammar warm-ups today.  I use the book here for this.  Students complete the daily exercise on their own and then on Friday we go over the entire packet together and students ask questions about the ones they didn't understand.  They correct their answers as we go along and then the only day I look at is the "Friday" day.  Students will also be doing an activity with pipe cleaners that starts to get them thinking about their thinking.  This is the way I will get them start thinking about their thought process in a non-threatening way.

Day 2- Teacher models read-aloud for class.  As a class, everyone creates a reading strategies list and they fill this out in their ISN.  As homework, students will record their own read-aloud with a common text and post it to our Haiku wiki page and complete the left side of their ISN

Right side of ISN - list of strategies that the class comes up with together

Left side of ISN - student listen to their read aloud and fill in  the table about the strategies they use.  This will also be used for a discussion in class.

Day 3- Students will be introduced to their reading journal today.  They will do their first reading journal and share with their partner to make sure that their journal is meeting the expectations.  In class, students will listen to their partner's read-aloud and will identify at least 2 reading strategies that the speaker used.  The two will come together and discuss what they found and share their answers from their left side of their notebook.

Day 4- Students free read and journal.  Teacher models talking to the text for students with "7th Grade" by Gary Soto.  Students will practice in pairs as well on this.  I will go back and forth with student led TttT and teacher led TttT.  Students will fill out the right side of their ISN during this time.  For homework, students will practice TttT on their own with a short poem (left side).

Left side - students practice TttT and they recognize which types of comments they are making as they TttT

Right side - Students take notes about TttT as the teacher is modeling for the class.

Day 5- Grammar packets are due and are gone over as a class at the beginning of class.  (No free reading and journals on this day!)  Students will be meeting with book groups today to share their journal entries and discuss the books they are currently reading.  When finished, students will meet with their seat partner and discuss their TttT homework and what they marked.  The class will come back at the end and share how we are doing with TttT.

So these are my first 2 weeks of school for 7th grade English.  Coming up:

- QAR

- Narrative Elements with short stories

- Poetry and Figurative Language