Interactive Notebook Freebie!

At IRA this past May, I sat in on an interactive notebook session sponsored by Elmer's Teacher's Club. It was really very interesting. It got me thinking about how I could use it in my classroom. Then this summer my friend Jessica in Alexandria, who teaches middle school, started developing her interactive notebooks for her kids this year. I got to see them last night and they are amazing! She has inspired me to start working on my own notebooks. She will be starting a TpT store soon so I will definitely be posting more info on that later!!

What are interactive notebooks you ask? Well they are all over the place. Here are some resources:
Wikispaces
Elmer's Teacher Club
Plenty of YouTube Videos
Lots of teacher's blogs
And all you have to do is type it in Pinterest and there is a plethora of stuff there!!

Basically, it's to help students be more creative and independent with classwork as well as to create a resource that can be very valuable throughout the year.

I started designing my own Interactive Notebook to go along with our Journeys 2014 reading program. While we will be using Journeys to supplement CAFE lessons, we are going to use the grammar, writing, and spelling activities. I've taken the first week of Journeys, Back to School (which is technically just getting kids back into the swing of things), and made a simple little beginning, modified interactive notebook.

I included directions for how to start your notebook. I'm going to set up my reading notebooks for my firsties by adding the tabs and numbering the first page where they are to start. We will work through the activities together as we review kindergarten and routines and procedures for the first week.