This marks my third full year using ISNs (Interactive Student Notebooks). When Pinterest first came around, it introduced me to this world of teacher blogs, teacherspayteachers.com, and, of course, interactive notebooks. Like a million of other female teachers, I've always considered myself crafty, creative, and a visual learner. So, upon first glance of the beautifully colorful ISN pages, I knew I would be hooked. When Erin Cobb came out with her interactive notebook pages, it all clicked for me. I absolutely love her products and they have become a MAJOR part of my ELA curriculum. Her literature and informational text pages are perfection and I use them pretty much verbatim for how she laid them out/wrote them.
While I also purchased her writing pages, I found that I did not really use them. It's not that they aren't good, it's just that writing curriculum has always been more comfortable to me than literature (Weird-since I was a Lit major!). I tend to be in my own element for writing and kind of teach using my own strategies and resources. For the past two years, I had my students write in their journals and put writing mini-lessons in there. Last year a student told me he didn't really want to keep the journal of writing drafts (they take home a published portfolio in June) but that he "guessed" he would because he wanted to keep those writing lessons. Soooo....to make an already-too-long story short, this year I split the composition notebooks into an "English/Writing" side and a "Reading" side. So far the only topic that students disagreed with me on which side to go in was figurative language. I won and it went in the English side. ;)
I think this has been my best ISN year to date. I feel much more organized! I have a Table of Contents which is split down the middle. I just had the kids write English on the left and Reading on the right. Erin's Grammar pages are great and a lot of those have gone in as well. We're nearing the end of the writing side, but it works out because we're now delving into literature.
Resources on the left from: Lovin Lit (TPT)
Resources on the right from: Teaching Teens in the Twenty First (TPT)
Most of November and December was spent on my Personal Narrative Writing Unit. It seems like a lot of time spent, but I use that as the basis for many skill lessons. We close read mentor texts, learn applicable grammar skills (compound & complex sentences), learn stylistic writing strategies, and more. It seems that when the writing topic is personal to my students, they are much more invested. So basically, I really work this unit to get as much out of it as possible. First the kids brainstorm, then pre-write, then draft. Then the lessons come in. By the time I have to teach essay writing, my students already have a great skill-set and I don't spend even half the time on essays as I do narratives.
This week I'm gearing up to glue in all of these writing (student) anchor charts in their ISNs. I found it to be way too distracting to glue anything when we were in the midst of writing. I have a writing portfolio cart and students just kept everything in there. Tomorrow we will spend a solid day on ISN organization. We'll glue all the past writing lessons in as well as glue in new interactive notes for upcoming lit lessons. While doing the writing portion, we'll highlight and review!
Resources above from: Blurbs from the Blue Chalkboard (TPT)
Wow! If you made it through my post, thank you, thank you for reading! I really enjoyed sharing how I've made my own writing lessons work into the ISN.
-Lisa
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