Interactive notebooks are a BIG part of my middle school Spanish classroom. When I taught in elementary school our notebooks served more as a porfolio of the student's learning but in middle school my students' notebooks have become their main resource and de facto textbook for the two years they are in my class.
Keeping up with notebooks is not easy though! If you don't have the right systems in place you might question (like I did) if they are worth the trouble. Believe me, they are! One of my favorite things to hear is a student asking to grab their notebook to use during an activity or assignment or even to take it home to practice their Spanish outside of class. When done right, interactive notebooks help build lifelong learners.
8 Tips to Maximize your Interactive Notebooks!
1. Use Canva to create templates for your covers, syllabus, unit section dividers, unit overviews and reflections. Once you have them set up then you can just update with specifics for the grade level and unit of study. It also gives the notebooks a more organized and uniform look. Click HERE for a FREE template.
2. Have students number their pages and keep a table of contents at the front. This helps keep things organized and uniform so when you go to do a notebook check, the majority of students should have what they need where they need it.
3. If you are using composition notebooks, print things at 80-90% so that they will fit on the page. Students then cut off the excess before gluing it in.
4. Give students jobs that will help streamline the process anytime you put stuff in your notebooks. I have Notebook captains that pass out notebooks and Cleanliness captains who make sure our tabletop trash cans are on the tables and then empty them at the end of class. I have cooperative partner mats with numbers 1-4, so I usually tell one number from each group to grab the supply caddies that have glue, scissors, crayons, and colored pencils in them.
5. Foldables are cute but sometimes our pages are super basic - picture dictionaries glued in or even just lists of vocab copied from our flashcards in English and Spanish. Don't overthink it! The idea is that the students are creating a resource and documenting their learning, not making a Pinterest-worthy notebook page.
6. Keep a teacher notebook as an exemplar. Students can reference my notebook to see what they need and where to put it.
7. Accept that middle school students are still learning how to organize themselves. You will have an entire spectrum of notebooks - from beautifully maintained and color-coded to hot mess express with things hanging out the side and in the wrong place. The latter may need extra support when it comes to paying attention to details. This is an opportunity to practice those skills and reflect on the progress they're making.
8. We don't get out our notebooks every class but I keep them in a centrally located place so students can grab them if they need or want to use them. I also plan activities in the same class period or the next class where students will need the information they put in their notebook. This helps train them to use it as a resource.
Do you use interactive notebooks? What are your top tips?
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