Interactive Notebooks – Types of Teacher-side Assignments
My teacher-side assignments are usually either question strips, fill in the blank notes, or articles. These are my “go tos” when I sit down to plan those pages.
Question Strips
I use question strips most often when I want to guide students in reading their textbook or another type of nonfiction article. 7 – 10 questions will fit on a strip,depending on how involved the answer is to the question. I use a Word document in landscape orientation, then insert a table. Once I’ve formatted the individual column, I just cut and paste. Students work on them individually or in pairs, and then I review them with the class.
Fill in the Blank Notes
I use fill in the blank notes when I want to “tell the story” of the topic, with lots of visuals and possibly film clips. I create a powerpoint presentation with all of the relevant info, then export the outline to Word. I delete key words/people/phrases and replace them with blanks. The blanks will be filled from the lecture.
If it is more than one page, the notes can be easily formatted into a booklet. Occasionally I have students answer discussion questions from the notes before we move on to the right hand page.
Articles
Sometimes I will write, find, or otherwise cobble together an article that addresses the topic. We read it and do one of several active reading strategies with it. I like this strategy when the information they need to learn is fairly straightforward.
Those of you who use the interactive notebook, I would really love to hear about what you do on your teacher pages!
Here is a more recent post on another type of teacher-side assignment: reader’s theater.
Thanks for sharing these pages! I need to see what it looks like. I am starting to feel more confident in using ISN this year in my class – thanks to you!!!!
This post was amazingly helpful! The more I learn from your experience, the less anxiety I feel about the IAN!