I’m super excited to share how my students use Interactive Notebooks in my 9th grade ELA classroom. I am late to the Interactive Notebook game, but I knew that I wanted to try them this year. I looked around at all of these great middle school products on TeachersPayTeachers, and asked myself how I could get my high school students to “interact” without having them feel like I was babying them.
I read extensively about the left-side/right-side set up, and worked on applying it to my notebook. What could the mnemonic “the left side LOVES student work and the right side is RESTRICTED to teacher input” mean for secondary students? Moreover, how could I decrease the general amount of time lost to cutting and gluing?
I decided to set up every lesson using the In-Through-Out model. This means that my students work in a backwards C on a spread.
IN
The IN (upper left) is a bell-ringer or anticipation activity that helps students focus or activate prior knowledge about a topic. Here are some activities I’ve used with amazing results:
*Explain why “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Disney’s Mulan is ironic.
*Write the first paragraph of a story that starts… (use a prompt for whatever genre you’re studying)
*Defend (character)’s actions in the chapters you read for homework.
*Create a plot diagram of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”.
*List three causes of World War II.
THROUGH
The THROUGH (right side -> teacher input) can be any number of things: scaffolded notes, in-class group work, graphic organizers, annotated close reading, and structured writing practice. I do give my students some foldables because they love cutting and gluing, and these can be easily completed while listening to an audio book. Here are some things we’ve done on the right side:
*Identify the elements of Dystopian fiction and characters.
*Review/Learn drama terminology using a foldable.
*Analyze the diction in a Sandra Cisneros story using an organizer.
*Create a glossary of words found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
*Annotate an Emily Dickinson poem.
*Analyze a political cartoon using the SCIM method.
OUT
The OUT (bottom left) is independent practice or homework. This has really helped focus the work I give students – I have to choose the most important part, because it’s got to fit on the bottom half of the left page. I know that seems like a silly, self-inflicted rule, but think about it: if a student can identify irony in four or five well-constructed examples, do they really need a two-sided worksheet? Here are some quick and effective ways to use the OUT section for independent practice:
*Identify three literary devices in a text.
*Compare two political figures’ opposing views on a given topic.
*Describe the Pathos used in an essay.
*Analyze the meaning of a given quote in a piece of fiction.
*Create three metaphors for school.
The IN-THROUGH-OUT method of setting up the notebook has also helped me with my lesson planning. There is a natural beginning, middle, and end of the spread, and so it’s easy to tell if I need to add more independent practice or add more structure to my input.
I have also facilitated the notebooks in my classroom by taking pictures of my model notebook for our class website. I use sticky notes to put the various task descriptions on the page, and I go ahead and paste in all blank organizers for students. I’ve also started giving students a unit overview that includes what we’ll put on each page.
Next year, I’m going paperless, but I will still stick to the same format as I move to Digital Interactive Notebooks. I think it’s a great way for students to visualize how the pieces of the lesson connect.
This has been a game-changer in my classroom. Students are more focused than ever, and I love that they have an artifact of their learning that endures beyond the end-of-semester paper toss.
I’m super excited to share how my students use Interactive Notebooks in my 9th grade ELA classroom. I am late to the Interactive Notebook game, but I knew that I wanted to try them this year. I looked around at all of these great middle school products on TeachersPayTeachers, and asked myself how I could get my high school students to “interact” without having them feel like I was babying them.I read extensively about the left-side/right-side set up, and worked on applying it to my notebook. What could the mnemonic “the left side LOVES student work and the right side is RESTRICTED to teacher input” mean for secondary students? Moreover, how could I decrease the general amount of time lost to cutting and gluing?
I decided to set up every lesson using the In-Through-Out model. This means that my students work in a backwards C on a spread.
IN
The IN (upper left) is a bell-ringer or anticipation activity that helps students focus or activate prior knowledge about a topic. Here are some activities I’ve used with amazing results:
*Explain why “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Disney’s Mulan is ironic.
*Write the first paragraph of a story that starts… (use a prompt for whatever genre you’re studying)
*Defend (character)’s actions in the chapters you read for homework.
*Create a plot diagram of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”.
*List three causes of World War II.
THROUGH
The THROUGH (right side -> teacher input) can be any number of things: scaffolded notes, in-class group work, graphic organizers, annotated close reading, and structured writing practice. I do give my students some foldables because they love cutting and gluing, and these can be easily completed while listening to an audio book. Here are some things we’ve done on the right side:
*Identify the elements of Dystopian fiction and characters.
*Review/Learn drama terminology using a foldable.
*Analyze the diction in a Sandra Cisneros story using an organizer.
*Create a glossary of words found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
*Annotate an Emily Dickinson poem.
*Analyze a political cartoon using the SCIM method.
OUT
The OUT (bottom left) is independent practice or homework. This has really helped focus the work I give students – I have to choose the most important part, because it’s got to fit on the bottom half of the left page. I know that seems like a silly, self-inflicted rule, but think about it: if a student can identify irony in four or five well-constructed examples, do they really need a two-sided worksheet? Here are some quick and effective ways to use the OUT section for independent practice:
*Identify three literary devices in a text.
*Compare two political figures’ opposing views on a given topic.
*Describe the Pathos used in an essay.
*Analyze the meaning of a given quote in a piece of fiction.
*Create three metaphors for school.
The IN-THROUGH-OUT method of setting up the notebook has also helped me with my lesson planning. There is a natural beginning, middle, and end of the spread, and so it’s easy to tell if I need to add more independent practice or add more structure to my input.
I have also facilitated the notebooks in my classroom by taking pictures of my model notebook for our class website. I use sticky notes to put the various task descriptions on the page, and I go ahead and paste in all blank organizers for students. I’ve also started giving students a unit overview that includes what we’ll put on each page.
Next year, I’m going paperless, but I will still stick to the same format as I move to Digital Interactive Notebooks. I think it’s a great way for students to visualize how the pieces of the lesson connect.
This has been a game-changer in my classroom. Students are more focused than ever, and I love that they have an artifact of their learning that endures beyond the end-of-semester paper toss.
I am late coming across your blog, but not to notebooking. I have used the left side/right method for several years and I love it. I am moving from 5th grade to high school biology. I was trying to find a way of using a biology INB without making my 9th graders feel like they were back in 5th grade with me...lol! I love your idea of the In-Through-Out Method for notebooking! I am going to figure out how to incorporate this method into my biology INB.
ReplyDelete