Tried It Tuesday {Interactive Notebooks}

It's time for another edition of Tried It Tuesday!  I love all the ideas of things "tried" that teachers share each week!  Posts can be about things tried in the classroom or at home!  

My Tried It:

Interactive Notebooks
This year I have completely changed how my students organize their writing journals.  After spending a lot of time reading posts this summer about interactive journals, I purchased some amazing products (during the TPT back to school sale of course!) for transforming my students' journals in ELA this year.  Here are some of the most helpful resources for interactive notebooks that I purchased.

Just look at the amazing Table of Contents for this Interactive Reading Notebook by I'm Lovin Lit!  It aligns to the Common Core for grades 4-8.  I love that this resource has above and beyond what I will need for teaching 4th grade.  

On Saturday, I wrote a post about using her figurative language student pages for similes here.

I love how this product also has editable templates for the interactive lessons!  I edited this template in Powerpoint to include the six types of figurative language that I want my 4th graders to learn.  It was so easy to customize it for my class.  Under each strip, we are recording the definition.  Then, each example of figurative language has its own separate page in the notebook with a further example and song lyrics that incorporate the figurative language.

Students color coded each strip to match the figurative language posters that I purchased from I'm Lovin Lit to display in my room.  This poster set actually included 57 posters on various topics!

I also invested in the Interactive Writing Notebooks but am still exploring this huge resource!

Another set of interactive resources I purchased was the 4th grade Interactive Reading Notebook and 4th Grade Interactive Language Notebook by Nicole Shelby.

 This is the table of contents for the reading notebook:

 I forgot to take pictures of the activities we have used from the reading notebook, but will add some later.  I haven't used the language notebook resources yet.

One more resource that I have tried is the Interactive Language Arts Notebook companion to mentor sentences.  See a detailed post here about how I have incorporated mentor sentences in my classroom.  I also show how I have divided my students' journals into two sections.  The front of the journal is for reading/writing notes and written responses to reading and on demand writing prompts.  The back of the journal is for grammar notes and mentor sentences.  The students use the beginning of the journals for two separate Table of Contents, one for the front and one for the back.

Here are some pictures of the foldable for singular and plural possessives from my students' notebooks.

What is my favorite part of using interactive journals this year?  Students are really taking ownership of their journals and using them as a resource!  They take them out to look up information at random times.  I love that!  The interactive piece really seems to stick with them.  

What is something that I wish I could change?  Time!  The time it takes to cut and glue is getting BETTER but it takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r. those first couple weeks!  It has only been seven weeks and there has been such an improvement.  Following directions is also getting better but I still often have that one student in each class who will not listen to directions and cut the paper wrong, therefore, having to start over.  The time is definitely worth it when I see students using their notebooks though!  If you are trying it for the first time, persevere.  

Spark Student Motivation {Figurative Language}

I am all bundled up this Saturday afternoon and the furnace has been running.  We are sure feeling the change of seasons here in New York.  Thursday was a white knuckled drive to work with the roads completely covered with wet, slushy snow.  My van did not have snow tires yet and I had to "creep" all the way.  My three year old said, "It's bumpy, Mommy."  That is because the van was not stopping and I had to pump the brakes and everything was shaking!  The snow tires went on Friday. :)

On Wednesday, I wrote about the introduction to poetry in my classroom and today I added some pictures to that post from my students' journals.  They wrote down their "thoughts about poetry".
While I was taking pictures of that page in a few journals, I also snapped some pictures of an activity we did this week to begin figurative language.

I am linking up with the amazing, Joanne, at Head Over Heels for Teaching to share this strategy for motivating students when learning figurative language.

This year I purchased several interactive reading and language notebook resources on TpT, including this Interactive Reading Literature Notebook for the Common Core by I'm Lovin' Lit.

This resource is jam packed with 160 pages of tools for teaching literary elements!!  I absolutely LOVE the pages for the lessons on figurative language.  The lesson incorporates song lyrics for each type of figurative language.  Music is such a wonderful motivator!  Here are a couple pics of the  journal page for simile using song lyrics to "Mean" by Taylor Swift.

It was so neat to have my students zero right in on those lyrics and pick out the similes.  We highlighted the similes in the lyrics and then wrote what two things the simile is comparing in the margin.  These directions are stated clearly in this product download and there are pictures included for teachers too!

We listened to this verse of the song a couple times (the whole song once as well) and the students just loved it!  I can't wait for next week when we discuss other types of figurative language and use more pages from this interactive journal.  I know the students will be so excited each time they get new set of lyrics.  

I have some more ideas to share with you about activities I have tried for the first time this year using interactive journals.  Check back on Tuesday to see some more ideas I have tried with interactive journals! :)  It's a work in progress but I plan on sharing what I have learned about interactive journals in blog posts throughout the year.  

Have a great weekend everyone!  Stay warm!! :)

Five for Friday {October 4, 2013}

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for a quick Five for Friday to share some highlights of my week.  It will be an early night for me since this cold I am fighting is kicking my behind!  It probably didn't help that I had to stay up last night watching my Bills lose. :(

 Guess what arrived?!?

That's right, our pen pal letters arrived from Jessica (Ideas by Jivey) and Gary (Scrappy Guy Designs) in Georgia!!  The students have no idea yet because this week was insane trying to play catch up with fire drills three days in a row and a 1/2 day with students today.  I also still need to pair up the names and can't wait to do the big reveal next week.  The students will be ecstatic!!  

This folder was in the envelope!

 Here is the inside with the letters, "Cool Stuff Every Kid Should Know about Atlanta" book, and class lists (they have about 50 students total to match my numbers since I teach ELA to the whole 4th grade).

There is also a little fact card about Lawrenceville for each student!

We worked on the first interactive notebook lesson in our writing journals.  This characters interactive notebook activity is from the 4th Grade Interactive Reading Notebook by Nicole Shelby.

 We finished reading the book, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing this week and completed some character trait activities.  Students completed a graphic organizer where they listed a character trait for some of the characters in the story and found at least two specific details from the text that demonstrated that trait (sorry, I took the graphic organizer from a resource and didn't make it myself).  For example, the main character, Peter, is responsible.  Details:  Peter takes care of his pet turtle on his own by cleaning the habitat and feeding the turtle.  He is also responsible because he completes his homework on time and wants his school project to be well done.  I was so proud to see my students refer to this page in their journal without any prompting from me when completing activities about character traits!

We had our first monthly "Homework Stars" incentive lunch party that ended with some Gangnam Style "Just Dance" from Youtube.  Homework Stars is homework incentive we are using as a departmentalized 4th grade.  You can read more about it here.

I finally got around to mod podging about 50 writing journal covers that the students had personalized.  On some of the journals I used shipping tape to cover them because they had the plastic like covers that mod podge doesn't work well on.  I use this free editable handout for my students.  They loved it!

It was spirit week for homecoming this week and every day the students had a special dress up day.  Here is a picture of some students on "mismatch" day!  The boy is wearing different socks and shoes. :)

You need to checkout the giveaway at Fifth in the Middle!  One of my BBB's, Diane, is celebrating 1,000 TpT Followers and giving away a $20 TpT gift certificate!  In addition, ten winners will win any item from her TpT store.

Happy weekend everyone!!