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

Reading Apprenticeship and Interactive Notebook Beginnings

My summer will be filled with reading, planning and moving :)

I am currently reading the book Reading for Understanding by Ruth Schoenbach, et al.  It focuses on the Reading Apprenticeship technique and how to implement it into the classroom.  My school is very big on the reading apprenticeship method and as I read I can understand why.  What I have read so far (I am about half way through) is that this program is about focusing on the process students go through to read, rather than the decoding process.  This has been eye opening for me both as a reader and as a teacher.  As I have been reading this book, I am starting to pay attention to my own reading habits/struggles.  It has already helped me get through parts of the text that were dry or it helped me to build stamina as I needed to reach certain parts of the book to reach my daily reading goal.

I am already trying to find ways to incorporate the 4 main qualities of this method.

Ways I hope to incorporate what I have learned so far:
1) During the first few weeks of school, we will be focusing on creating an awareness of metacognition in each of the students.  They need to see how they make sense of texts and what trips them up and WHY.

2) We will also be building a community in the classroom where students feel secure enough to share their struggles with reading.  As I read, I find that RA relies on the ability of the students to share how they struggle and also how they worked their way through that problem!

3) Create classroom made anchor charts to guide students and to remind them of the topics we have covered as a class.  These anchor charts should also portray the strategies and terms we have learned in the process!

4) Give credit for the process rather than the product.  I really like this idea and I am trying to come up with ways to put the emphasis on the process rather than on the final product,  Students are always graded on their final product, but in these middle level classes, the important part is that they know HOW TO GET TO the final product!  Let's face it, those middle school grades are not as important as the ones they earn in high school or even college.

Along with reading and studying the RA program, I am also researching and working on implementing interactive student notebooks (ISN).  Overall, I am super excited about creating these with the students and hopefully creating a resource for the students!

For English, this is what I have planned out so far:

#1 - Cover sheet - students will create a sheet that has their goals for the year and they will decorate it to reflect themselves.

My example that I created this summer

#2 - Rubric - This will be where students tape in their grading rubric.  The plan is to collect the notebooks once a trimester, but I will be doing random, timed pop quizzes that test the organization and neatness of their notebooks.

#3-5 TOC (I might need more space than this, but I figure we can always tape in more pages)

#6 - Give me 5 page - this will be the student reflection on the course syllabus.  Students will trace their hand and then in each finger they will pick the 5 most important rules/procedures that they found in the syllabus.   They are to decorate and make the hand reflect them as a person as well.

#7 Course Syllabus - taped in! (picture to come)

#8 2 :) and 2 ?'s - I found this idea on this blog http://mrshester.blogspot.com/ (I highly recommend it if you are looking into ISN!)  Students will go over and read the ISN expectations in class (they will also sign it with a parent this is on the next page) and then on this page, they will write 2 parts about the notebook that really excite them and draw a picture to go with it and 2 questions/concerns they have about the notebook and draw a picture to go with each picture.

#9 - ISN expectations contract - This will be a sheet explaining what students are responsible for when it comes to completing their ISN.  The bottom of this sheet will need to be signed by the student and a parent/guardian.

#10 - Books I want to read - I am going to give the students a fun header and then they will use the pages of the book to fill in info on books they hear about or see that they might want to read.

#11 - Reading Log - Students will track the books they read here.  I have an ice cream party at the end of the year for any students who can read 25 books in a year.  Last year this system didn't work out too well and most students forgot to track their books.  With the ISN, I hope to have this be a little easier for me and for the students.  Parents will also have to sign and date to show that they really did read the book.

Other parts I am going to have but I am not sure where to put them:
- Glossary of terms - I saw a great idea about creating a glossary of key terms used in class.  I would like to try this, but at the moment I am not sure how I want to do it.
- Reading journal - Last year I started reading journals and I really enjoyed them.  I would like to do them again this year, but I haven't decided how yet.  Either the students will need a second notebook, or we will need to use a 3 subject notebook to include everything I want to do.
- Word Wall - Students are learning new words all the time, I just don't think they realize how many they are learning!  I would like to have a place in the notebook where students can track new words they find as they are reading!
- Partner sheet - I have created two partner sheets to make pairing students fast and easy, but I am not sure where I want to put this sheet.  I think I want them to tape on the back of the front cover, but I am not sure are this point.
- a Ribbon in the back to be used as a bookmark in the ISN.


At our open house, I plan to have a list of required materials for parents, and I will also have a "wish tree" where parents can pledge to donate needed items so that we hopefully have enough supplies to make this an easy process.  More info to come on my classroom setup and my open house materials!

Now to start planning the lessons and materials to go with the classroom content!!  Have you done ISNs in your classroom?  What worked for you and what didn't?