Notebooks, Notebooks, and More Notebooks

I recently introduced another interactive notebook to my class. We use the writing notebook, the math notebook, the grammar notebook, and now. . .the reading literature notebook. I thought my kids would moan because that's what kids do when something is repetitive. Even something I would think they enjoy. They just get sick of the same thing over and over again. Sometimes I think they moan just for the sake of moaning. Have you ever had your kids copy something from the board and you have them erase a word and change it? They moan. You would think you had them throw away their papers, start over, and rewrite a ten page essay. Really all you've done is have them change a to the. 

We just used a simple school journal.

So, like I said, I told my students we would start a new notebook and they cheered! Whew! This handy-dandy notebook has been pretty handy. The Common Core standards can look pretty complex, but the kids are handling them very well. 

At the moment we are working on comparing and contrasting two versions of the same story. 

Two versions of the same story. Armadilly Chili is one of my favorites. The illustrations are beautiful.

With our notebooks, we are comparing and contrasting the characters, setting, plot, and central message. 

Here the students completed a notebook page for both The Little Red Hen and Armadilly Chili. Using that information, they completed a Venn diagram.

My favorite part is the Central Message cake. This notebook page includes common central messages. After reading a story, the kids take out their notebooks and look through the candles to find the central message of the story. I'm going to be honest, I had trouble determining the central message of a story as an adult. When I hear kids discussing this, I'm amazed.

Central Message cake

 So the kids are happy because they think we're doing crafts and I am happy because they sound like high schoolers. Interactive notebooks have to be the best thing since sliced bread. 

BOLD Beginnings!

Each year I'm dying with excitement to teach Bold Beginnings. It's like I want to just jump right in and skip every other important piece of writing because once I teach kids about Bold Beginnings, their writing becomes amazing! 

So last week my world became complete. I was able to teach my 2nd graders the best thing ever, BOLD BEGINNINGS! Yay! I love it!

OK, rewind. . . I was also really impressed by how well my students picked up on this temporal words activity. 

We put together the temporal word notebook page in out Interactive Notebooks. The students will use it to reference while writing. Right now, the kids are writing a personal narrative after tons of class practice.

Interactive Notebooks, where have you been my whole life?

I just love how the kids have these notes to look  back on. 

OK back to the Bold Beginnings!

It all started with this book.

It's filled with sounds heard throughout a city, which is a great way to introduce onomatopoeia.  

 That's a real life kid page right there.

We put together this notebook page and wrote a Bold Beginning under each flap. The kids had so much fun making the Oo oo! Ah ah! noises of a monkey.

Once we tried out each B.B., we chose a new topic. . . Halloween!

Kids worked in groups to write all four of the B.B.

Here is our collection of Bold Beginnings.

The thing I enjoy most about teaching writing is teaching kids to let go of spelling. 

"Don't worry about your spelling!" I say. And once kids let go, you get some great writing.

More practice. More fun!

Today my students had to apply this new learning to their narratives. Each was able to write four different Bold Beginnings to topics of their choosing. I was so proud of them.
The best part, they had fun writing!

Mission accomplished.

Freebie Friday for October 17th

Happy Friday!

This is an addition to my Interactive Grammar Notebook for the Primary Grades and it's FREE! If you like it, check out the full product at my TpT store. If you haven't tried interactive notebooks, you're missing out! Kids absolutely love them and. . . shhh. . . don't tell. . . they don't know they're learning.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a restful weekend :)

 

Interactive Math Notebook in the Making

As we start the year creating out Interactive Writing Notebooks, we are beginning to put together our Interactive Math Notebooks. There are just so many words students need to know in order to understand math, so I decided to put together a math notebook which focuses on vocabulary.

So on Monday I told the kids that we would be starting a new notebook. And with that announcement, I heard cheers. I love how much they love these notebooks. I showed them their new notebooks, which apparently look like Minecraft. When it comes to video games, I'm clueless. After the kids got past the Minecraft conversation, we got to work.

We began with the word equal. Although students use the word and write equal signs daily, I've decided many kiddos don't actually understand what equal means. We worked on the word each day this week, and soon the students were gaining a deeper understanding of what equal means in math.

In the meantime, we were learning about arrays. I don't like to work on this many pages in a day/week, but we had some catching up to do.

First the kids needed to see an array and understand what it is. Each notebook section begins by developing an understanding of the vocabulary used in math. Then students work on the concept. Whether it be in the notebook or in their math books, students need the vocabulary to understand what they are doing. After we put together the notebook page, the kids made their own arrays with stickers while referring to their notebooks.The following day I had them write an equation to match the arrays they made from stickers.

On Wednesday, we continued building on our new word--array.

The kids colored their pages. Then we cut out the pieces and matched them with an equation.

On Thursday, the kids added to the arrays section. Underneath each array is an equation to match it.

I gave each group a stack of hamburgers. Who wouldn't love arrays made of hamburgers? So one person made an array and the other group members had to write an equation to match the array. Each student had a turn making an array. Who knew arrays could be so much fun?

Before starting our notebooks, we focused on the word equation. We use the word daily in math and it is becoming part of their vocabulary. This week we will start on the word digit and begin learning about place value.

I see a difference in my students' abilities to understand math with the focus on math vocabulary. I'm excited to see the growth! And I am excited to see their excitement!

This Week with our Interactive Notebooks II

So last week my students worked on adding details to simple sentences and to be more specific in their writing. The week before that, the kids learned about ideas and "juicy details."

Ideas

Juicy Details

Adding details

Be Specific

This week we took our knowledge of "being specific" and used a graphic organizer, called a funnel, to move from a broad topic to something more specific. 

funnel

Broad to specific

I showed the students a "photo album" (PowerPoint) of our pretend trip to the zoo. It showed the San Diego Zoo, some animals, a giraffe, a woman feeding the giraffe, and a giraffe's tongue. So we took a very broad topic (a trip to the zoo) and made it much more specific (feeding a giraffe at the zoo). I tell the kids that finding one specific part of a trip, day, birthday. . .makes your writing more interesting.

Now that we've covered the important components of Ideas, I will read various mentor texts to the class so students can see how authors use the trait.

On Thursday, I read Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.

The story is about a little boy with an enemy. His dad comes up with a plan to get rid of his enemy, which is to make an enemy pie.

There's so much  more to this story, but I was just getting to the point of the activity. It's a really cute story. I recommend it like I do every mentor text I suggest in the Interactive Writing Notebook.

After reading the book, we discussed the ideas the author used is his story. The story gets kids' imaginations going thinking about the ingredients in an enemy pie. So, the activity I created gets kids using their ideas to come up with the ingredients in the pie.

Usually my students put gross things in their pies. For some reason these kids didn't. Hmmm.

Next week we will begin a narrative using everything we've learned. I will expect students to choose an idea, be specific in their writing, and add details to make writing more interesting. Now that they have some tools, it should be fun!

This Week with our Interactive Notebooks

This week our class was able to put together two pages of our Interactive Writing Notebooks. I created this notebook to get kids excited about writing. Kids enjoy writing when we give them the tools to become good writers. They also become more excited about writing when we free them of being perfect spellers. The number one question I hear while students are writing is, "How do you spell . . ?" I just tell them not to worry about it and just get your ideas out.

So this week we practiced using details to describe some animals. Often we read I saw _____ from our students. I figured, why not spruce it up with some detail. And so they did.

Now I know there's no writing for you to read. That's because, after taking ten pictures, these were the best ones. So many cute sentences. So many blurry pictures. 

The sentences said things like. . . I saw a green and red owl. Or I saw a stinky gray raccoon.

One of my favorite activities is Be Specific. A few years ago I told students they need to be specific in their writing without explaining what that meant. What was I thinking?! So after realizing I should probably explain that word, I told a little story.

It goes like this:

Sam wanted a dog, so he asked his mom for one. 

The next day Sam's mom brought home a big, white dog with floppy ears.

Sam said, "No mom. I wanted a small, white dog."

The next day his mom brought him a new dog. It was a small, white dog with floppy ears.

Sam said, "No mom. I wanted a small white dog with tiny ears.

The next day his mom brought home a small, white dog with tiny ears.

Sam said, "No mom. I wanted a small, white dog with tiny ears and brown spots."

At this point his mom was frustrated and she said, "You should have been more specific!"

This story might not be pet-friendly, but the kids love it. I have little pictures I show them. I explain to them that being specific, or exact, helps your reader understand your writing better.

Here are some of their specific dogs.

We'll do more activities, which include the kiddos being more specific so they can gain a deeper understanding of the word. This is just to get them started.

These activities can be found in my product at TpT. Your kids will love it!