My Take on Interactive Notebooks

Happy Friday Eve! Doesn't that sound a lot better than dreary old Thursday?? After the week I have had...I need Saturday to be here stat! I always love to escape after a long day and reflect on something great that is happening amid all the other stuff that can make you crazy if you let it. For me, that is using Interactive Notebooks in my math classes.

I am linking up with several other like-minded teachers who are great consumers of interactive notebooks in their own classrooms. I am thrilled to be part of the same blog hop hosted by 4mulafun!

Let me first start by telling you what INBs are NOT: I was in a professional development hosted by my regional service center here about this time last year. I was so excited to see composition notebooks on the tables when we walked in and were told to take one. I was even MORE excited to find that mine had grid paper inside. Am I a nerd or what? I was the only person stoked to be at a PD at 7:30 AM on a random Thursday. Because of grid paper. It really is the little things. Anyhow, long story short, all we did was glue random worksheets that we did in our notebook. I feel like it would have been better suited for a folder.

Or a trash can.

Needless to say, I didn't keep that notebook long. I like spirals better anyhow!

So, let me tell you what works in my classroom. And let me also state FOR THE RECORD that just because something works in my room doesn't mean that it will be a best fit for you and vice versa. Only you know your kids and what will work. I will tell you what DOES work for every classroom if the budget allows it--and that, my friends, is colored paper. Oh, mylanta. When the kids see that they get SO EXCITED. For real. One student said to me just today, "I just want to thank you for making our foldables on colored paper. It makes me look forward to your class."

They almost had to pick me up off of the floor.

Colored paper was the trigger. This, of course, I already knew. I mean, I love colored paper, so why wouldn't they?! But, I digress.

The point is that you have to find something that kids will look forward to each day. Something that keeps them on their toes.

We are just 8 days into the school year, and we are going strong with our notebooks. I have 6th grade regular math and 7th grade Pre-AP math this year, so I am keeping a notebook for each class. I am going to share with you what we have done so far in 7th grade so you can get an idea of how I set up my notebooks at the beginning of the year.

First page is always the table of contents. I printed all year on one legal size sheet of paper to save time each day.

Next, I had them put their syllabus in so that they have it to reference.

We are a goal-setting campus! Students can set anywhere from 3-5 math goals for the year, but they must follow up each one with an action plan. I was so proud of how serious they were with their goals. We have a big conversation about making them reasonable as well as attainable.

 

So, unfortunately, my Pre-AP babies didn't come to me with all of the skills that they need to be successful. Some did, some didn't. It depended on their placement last year. SO--we made some cheat sheets that they can reference. I know that this is way more teacher input than output, but sometimes curriculum pacing guides don't allow time for reflection or student output for everything!

Actually, giving them these cheat sheets has made them accountable for pre-requisite skills and they have already deemed their notebooks as their math bibles! A teacher's dream :)

We start every unit with vocabulary. The first unit, I model how I want them to do it, and then for subsequent units, they come up with the way that they want to display it themselves. In this case, I chose a simple tab foldable. Underneath, students write a definition and provide examples. 

This one here...I am particularly proud of! We had to classify numbers and although it seems like an easy task, I could tell by conversation the previous day that this was going to be an issue for some. This solved it all, and it was so easy to do! Layering the circles helped the students see which groups the values belonged to.

These are just SOME examples that I have used this week in my class. Stay tuned throughout the year to see more ideas. Whatever you do, the key here is to make it interactive. The best thing is when you see students pull out their notebooks instead of asking you a question. Not that I don't like the questions, but sometimes it gives me (as well as the student) so much more pleasure to find the answer themselves. 

One other thing that I love the INBs for is organization. In order for it to be truly useful for the kiddos, I try to make things easy to find. I LOVE these tabs:

Doesn't that just make you want to go to math class?!?

Check out these awesome posts for more ideas:

An InLinkz Link-up

Freebie - Table of Contents for Interactive Notebooks

Hello, there!

This is just a quick post to share something I made last night for my kiddos and I thought I would share with all of you!

If your students are like mine, it takes them FOREVER to set up their Interactive Notebooks that first week of school. Maybe they are still on summer break, maybe they are perfectionists, maybe it is something else, but it drives me bananas that they cannot number from 1-160 in less than 5 minutes. I do not know why it is so hard. But, then again, there is a lot about middle schoolers that leaves me completely befuddled.

So, after several years of going through the agony that is setting up the table of contents page, I am ELIMINATING the worst part by printing out the table of contents page for them. I am going to print this two sheets to a page, front and back to get this all on one sheet of legal paper. As soon as I get to the copier at school, I will post a picture on my FB page to show you what I mean!

I hope that this will be helpful to you! You can find it for FREE in my TPT store!

Also, today is the LAST day for this fabulous giveaway! Even if you have entered before, you can still share this giveaway again to gain more entries! Good luck and stay tuned for the announcement of the winners on my blog tomorrow!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Flash Friday Deals! Week 2

Did you snatch up last week's deal in time? It's time for Week 2!

Without further ado, here it is!

My Fold it Up! Bundle of Foldables to use in Middle School!

Right now, there are 13 different Fold it Ups! that are included. As more are added, the price will go up, but you will be able to download for free. Click the image or the link above to be taken to my store where you can purchase this for 50% off!

Here are some examples that are included:

Just to give you an idea of what is included!

Same as last week...if you have an item that you would like to be included for next week, leave a comment and I may add it to the list!

July Special in my TPT store!

Can you believe it is pretty much July? I have had 3 glorious weeks of summer and I am still cringing at the thought of moving classrooms in August. Some of you may remember that I moved campuses (my choice) in August of last year, and now I am changing rooms on that same campus. I didn't realize I was changing rooms until after I had packed away every. single. thing. into the cabinets in my old classroom. Oh well. Such is life!

I know that some schools go back as early as mid-July, so I wanted to do something special for the month of July ONLY! Remember when I put a bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers last summer that gave you access to every item in my store including future updates? Well, if you purchased each individual item from my store, it would total over $320!

For the next 31 days, it will be on sale for $99! After that, it will no longer be available for sale. I will convert it to a bundle that will not include future updates for free, and all future products for the 2014-2015 school year that I create will be available in a new bundle. Take advantage of this unique opportunity for the month of July ONLY!

Just click the image above to go straight to the product listing. 

Feel free to ask me any questions before purchasing, and happy shopping!

My favorite INB pages so far...

This is just a quick post since I started writing this post back in October and quite frankly having it sit in the drafts is stressing me out!

Moving to 8th grade this year has been awesome. I love the age group, love my school, and most of all I love my staff. My department has been so supportive of all the "changes" I wanted to make to the way 8th grade had been done in the past. The only problem was that I had so many resources for 6th and 7th grade, not so much for 8th grade. I knew I didn't have enough time over the summer to create new resources for my kids and finish the projects that I was already working on. 

I knew that I would need to peruse TPT for some help. I already had some favorite sellers that I could go to and I have to say that the best purchase I made was Lisa Davenport's ultimate foldable bundle. It has over 80 foldables ready to go for 8th grade and algebra 1. I still have to fill in some of my own here and there, but I have some other templates that I have purchased to help me with that. 

Here are just a few pages that I think turned out great. These are "my" pages and not the kids. Since I do most everything on the smart board, I don't always go back and write in the notebook. It's mostly for me to keep up with what page we are on. I know I need to do a better job of this!

Everyone's notebook starts with this page. They read the "rules" and then they sign it. Anytime they ask, "do we have to write this?" I always respond with, "what's rule number 6?" And they usually groan and write down whatever it is that they were protesting in the first place. 

This is the first table of contents page. I have them write the title of the page, the page number, and the date.  It makes it a lot easier when I reference an old page for review or when they have questions. 

This is one of the foldables from Lisa's bundle and it does a great job of illustrating the real number system so that kids understand. I should have taken a picture of the inside. Oops. 

This is one to teach scientific notation. It has four flaps to illustrate the four different types of problems involving scientific notation. We reference this foldable A LOT. 

This is one that I created on a whim because I realized my kids didn't remember from 7th grade about absolute value. I was including it in order of operations so this was a quick 10 minute mini-lesson that I made using 4mulaFun's flippable pack. 

I have been looking for different, fun ways to incorporate vocabulary in my classes this year. I have been trying something different each unit just to keep it fresh. For this unit, every student got an envelope and 10 index cards. We created our own frayer models and the kids loved it. 

And, finally, this was one of the most useful foldables that we have used so far. My kids LOVED evaluating algebraic expressions with square roots. Here's why: I told them we were doing Algebra. There is something about telling kids that we are working on something that is supposedly above their grade level! They eat it up and totally pay attention. Go figure. 

And there ya have it! I do apologize for not having links and is there is something misspelled. I'm on my iPad and it is difficult to edit!

How has your week been?

Monday Made It!

I have a few things I whipped up on Sunday afternoon to share with you today! I am linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It linkup.

Before I could start making anything, I had to run a *few* errands! Knowing Monday would be my first day to get into my classroom to start setting up, I needed to get some of these...15 to be exact!

I know I could have found them cheaper somewhere else, but in the grand scheme of things, how much would I have really saved? Probably not enough to warrant me going shopping in this disgusting heat wave we seem to be having! Anyhow, I bought 15 so that each pair of students would have one. I plan to use these as my INB supply boxes. I am going to work on labeling this this week and be back with a post of what goes in them later!

Next up was Target. A friend of mine told me how inexpensive Five-Star Notebooks were at Target and I had to scoop some up. I bought 6, one for each class period so that each class has their own "model notebook." I had trouble keeping up with 3 last year, so I certainly hope I do a better job of keeping up with 6! If you are using these instead of composition books, run--do not walk--to Target. These babies are $1.89!

Also, at Walmart I picked up these deals. The index cards are neon (my fave!) for under $1 per pack. I know the white ones are on sale everywhere...but I love the colored ones! I also found post-it notes cheaper than the dollar store (not much...$0.97) but hey! Every cent counts! Plus, the colors were way brighter...and that makes me want to use more of them.

 I was going to get some plain magnet tape, because I am always putting it on the back of posters that I want to stay on the board, but I hate how it always curls. I found these packs of magnet strips that are pre-cut, and they come 18 in a pack for less than $1! $0.97 seemed to be the magic price at Walmart! I got 3 packs. I have no idea what I will use it for, but I like to be ready :)

Last but not least...my clothespins. I went looking in my craft room for my bag of clothespins the other night and couldn't find them ANYWHERE. Seriously, I know it is a mess in there...but it's like they had runaway from home. Had to buy a new bag. Why? Keep reading :)

HOME MADE IT:

I made this lotion in March and it went over so well with my mom and some friends that I had to make more! I love to use lotion, but hate when it is greasy...and this is perfect! It is light, but thick at the same time and feels so luxurious when you use it. And, it makes 24 ounces of lotion! I did not come up with this recipe on my own...I adapted it from this pin. I swapped the Vaseline for Coconut Oil because I thought it might be greasy...I never tried it, so it may work for you!

Here's what you need:

15 oz of baby lotion (any scent...any brand--mine is from the Dollar Tree)

Twin pack of Vitamin E skin care cream (only found at Walmart on the bottom shelf of the lotion aisle)

2/3 cup of coconut oil (any brand will do...mine is from Sprouts, but I have used from Whole Foods, too)

Pour all ingredients into a bowl and whip with a hand mixer for 2-3 minutes making sure that all is incorporated and evenly blended. I periodically stop and scrape down the sides to be sure that there aren't any chunks of coconut oil floating around.

Then, I store it in airtight containers and pass it out to family and friends! I filled 3 of these today, and my mom was most appreciative of her lotion! In case you are wondering, I get these precious glass jars from Hobby Lobby in the glass section. They are normally $4, so just make sure you go when glass is 50% off, which is every other week!

 SCHOOL MADE IT:

I did make these supply labels to put on my storage containers at school. Well, I actually made them two weeks ago...but, I finally got around to printing and laminating! Like them? You can actually find them in my TPT store here

Also, I decorated my clothespins with some washi tape to go along with another project that will have to wait for next week's Monday Made It!

Aaaaaaand, I just realized how very long this post was! Sorry about that--if you made it to the end, you rock!

Dollar Deals!

The title of this post may be a tad misleading because some items were actually under $1...but I am sure you won't complain :)

I set out to find some things for my classroom that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg...here is a sample of what I found:

I went to the dollar tree in search of post-its (well, the off brand kind). I prefer Post-It brand sticky notes, but I plan on using them as an exit ticket this year on a board like this and with teaching 160 kids...you can see how fast I will run out of post-its! I got 250 in a pack for $1...may not be the best deal, but it was the best one I found today after going to 4 stores!

I also got a big roll of double sided tape because, well, you just never know when you need double sided tape!

Lastly, the two boxy looking things in the back are locker organizers that have thick magnets on the back. I am going to use these to organize my dry erase markers for my white board as well as remotes to my document camera and projector...I am CONSTANTY misplacing those...so this should be handy!

I mostly use that blue painters tape to stick everything to my walls at school and it is a pain! It is great for posters, but I wanted a better solution to post my word wall this year. Since I will be changing the word wall every few units (there are so many vocabulary words and I have limited wall space), I wanted something easy. I used these glue dots last year and not only did they hold up well, but it was also extremely easy to remove with NO damage! I got these at Joann's with a 50% off coupon...but they also sell them at Hobby Lobby!

If you are like me, you scour the deals in the newspaper ads each week to get the best deals! I can always use some more handheld pencil sharpeners to go in my community supply boxes and scored these for $0.25 each! These were found at Office Depot, on sale through Saturday.

I LOVE the Target Dollar Spot. I frequent it weekly in the summer to see what kind of new goodies they have. I found two more magnetic locker organizers to put on my board. The pink one is all glitter, which I HAD to have, and the other one has a crown design. I am sure I won't have a problem finding a spot for these cute things!

Ok, I kind of lied...those clipper magnets are $3, not $1...but in my defense I didn't realize that until I got to the register, and they are just so cute. TECHNICALLY, they are $1.50 a piece...seriously, perspective is everything :)

I also found these stellar sticky notes that are supposed to be used for to do lists...but everyone knows that a list has way more than 4 things to do. I stood there thinking of what I could use these for since the hubs was with me and I feel like I have to justify ALL purchases. And then it hit me! I can use these in my interactive notebooks to have the students list out the steps to solve problems--like Order of Operations! 

1. Grouping Symbols

2. Exponents

3. Mult/Div

4. Add/Sub

I am super excited to use these!

This really has nothing to do with school... but I found this cute little box of tissues that I bought for my mama! The left side says "I love how we don't even need to say outloud that I'm your favorite child." and the right side says "You're one of my favorite parents." I thought it was cute so hopefully she will, too!

What kinds of deals are you guys finding??

Interactive Notebooks - Two Perspectives

This week, my good friend and former (it feels so gosh darn sad to say that) teaching partner went to CAMT in San Antonio, TX. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it stands for Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching. It may sound boring--but let me tell you, it is FAB-U-LOUS! The speakers are a wonderful mixture of classroom teachers, specialists, vendor representatives, and out of state gurus. Case in point, the opening speaker on Wednesday morning was none other than the amazing and quite hilarious Dan Meyer. If you have no idea who that is, you can find out more about him here (but hurry back to finish reading!)

I felt all rejuvenated after listening to him speak about adding "perplexity" into our math problems and couldn't wait to get to our other sessions that we had lined up for the day. 

I was most excited to attend Jennifer Smith-Sloane's (many of you will know her as 4mulaFun!) session about how she uses and set sup her interactive notebooks in her middle school math classroom! I really wish that I had taken more pictures, but in all honesty I was so engaged that I forgot! I did take this picture (seen above) when I got back to the hotel with all the goodies we received! The most important thing we received was a Five Star 1-subject spiral notebook from the good folks at Mead - for free! They donated over 200 of these because they knew they were going to teachers! How nice is that? It's those acts of kindness that restore my faith in our society!

Anyhow, she had some really good ideas that I hope I remember to implement in August! Some of the things I was already doing...so that's always validating! My biggest takeaway from this session is this: In order for the students to take ownership of their notebooks, they need to be theirs. This means a few things to me. Number 1, the kids don't necessarily need to be on the same page as I am all the time so long as they are in the right order and they are keeping track of the pages for themselves on the table of contents (and for me when I grade them). Number 2, having a rubric to grade is important. Students need to know what they will be graded on and what each portion is worth. Number 3, there is not one right way to set up an interactive notebook. This statement was incredibly refreshing to me as I am always wondering if I am doing something right. I love that I can do things that will work in my classroom. Last, I am almost embarrassed to admit that I was "that" teacher who kept the math journals in the classroom last year. I allowed them to take them home so long as they returned with them the next day, but really, I should have encouraged them to take them home more often. I guess I thought I was compensating for that by posting the day's notes or activities on Edmodo, but those were my notes, not their notes. I still think it is good to post for those who didn't get finished writing or those who were absent, but I want to encourage my kiddos to take them home and use them for homework help this year--and hey, this means I have 6 free baskets for new school supplies :)

If you are wondering about 4mulaFun's flippables as shown in the picture above, visit her TPT store here. Buy the whole template pack...you SO won't regret it!

After that session, I went around the corner to another INB session and was excited to hear what a pair of teachers from College Station ISD had to say about how they used INB in their math classes. They totally reminded me of my former teaching partner and I and how we interact with each other. Anyhow, I remembered to take more pictures this time, so I will let the pictures guide the way :)

LOVED this idea! Punch a hole in the back of the composition notebook and loop a large rubber band through (7"), then you have something to keep the notebook together when it is so fat by the end of the year! The only problem that I foresee is that kids will shoot things across the rooms...so it will just have to be an expectation that I set in my classroom. Still love the idea!

Also, you might notice the tabs on the right side! These teachers had printed out tabs of the units at the beginning of the year and gave them to the kids on one sheet. The kids would put them where it was appropriate in their notebook at the beginning of a unit. Jennifer from the session before had a lot of great ideas for this as well.

Next came the inside front cover. This is VERY similar to the "Work in Progress" pocket that Jennifer gave us, but a little sturdier (and more costly!) This is a manila envelope with the top tab cut off and cut open down the right side. It is glued to the notebook and it is a way for kids to place work that is not ready to be glued into their notebook. I love the rules that are pasted on top! This year, I had rules that I printed off and we pasted those on the inside front cover as well, so this is similar. 

I am kind of torn on this part. The teacher presenting this session said that she saw a few years ago that the kids would get hung up on filling in the table of contents and not be working on the "math." So, her solution was to pre-print off the topics for each unit and leave open the date and page number columns for students to fill in. I totally get that. However, I think students need to be responsible and take ownership of their table of contents so that THEY refer back to it! Also, it kind of stresses me out to pre-print these since at least once a week I think of something that I want to add to the notebooks that I didn't think of before. Just my two cents--do what works for you and your class!

I LOVED this 2-page spread. On the left side, it is this particular district's cheating policy so that all students are in the know. A copy also goes home, posted on websites, is on a poster in every room, etc. On the right side is a syllabus for the year. Another epic discovery. I don't remember getting a syllabus prior to high school. Yes, I got a "welcome to ___th grade" letter with a supply list and how to organize my 27 dividers in my 3-inch binder, but never a syllabus outlining the expectations for that course. I send one home, but it is really geared more toward parents than students. I want to do a better job of that in the fall and then have them paste it in for a quick reference.

Look at all the fun stuff I got! Can't wait to add these to my collection of foldables/flipbooks from last year and keep adding to the catalog. I get super excited over things on colored paper...I just love it.

Now, you may have noticed that Jennifer uses spiral notebooks and the other session uses composition notebooks. This past year, I used composition notebooks because I thought that was "the way you did interactive notebooks." Well, it is one way, but there are pros and cons. The main pros for me was that is was all bound together and students were MUCH less likely to tear a sheet out of it to use for scratch paper. The cons are the size. It is smaller than a normal 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, so you can't fit as much information on a page. I am strongly considering moving to spiral notebooks for this reason. I LOVE that the pages are bigger and I can fit more "meat" on the page. I am concerned that students will buy they cheap notebooks that fall apart. The ones that Mead so generously provided for us were AWESOME and will certainly put those on the supply list, but I cannot control what parents buy, unfortunately! 

I hope to have another post after the school year starts as a follow up to how it all is going! If you made it to the end of this post...you are awesome! After re-reading this, I realize just how long it is, and I apologize--my posts aren't usually this long!

How do you set up interactive notebooks in your class?