I have officially survived my first full week of school. I have been busy this week and boy I am tired!!!! My body and my bladder are having a difficult time adjusting. :)
I have spent the week laying the ground work for the school year. In my language arts class, we began putting together our interactive notebooks. The kids were SO excited about these!!!!!! I get a lot of questions about how to put these together. Here is what I have chosen to do with them. Maybe this will give you some ideas.
1. The first thing I did was copy the cover, dividers, and all of the headers/I can statements for each standard.
2. The kids colored and glued the cover for the notebooks.
3. I had the students number each of the pages so we will always be on the same page and everyone's notebook will look similar. The students numbered the fronts and backs of each sheet in the bottom corners.
4. We cut out and glued all of the headers and dividers on the appropriate pages. When gluing the headers in, I allowed some additional pages for each standard for other activities that we might do in class that I wanted to be in the notebook.
Now the notebooks are ready to go for next week. We will be creating our interactive pages for poetry, drama, and prose. I have decided to start with the Common Core Standard.
RL.4.5Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.
The theory behind this is as we read fiction all year long, I can refer back to this standard by asking the students if what they are reading is poetry, drama, or prose and explain their answer by describing the structural elements of each type of writing.
I will blog about our activities that we do next weekend, but I plan to use my unit Understanding Prose, Poetry, and Prose. If you want to check this out in my TpT store, click on the picture below.
I hope this post helps you with deciding how to start putting together your notebooks. :)
Have a great weekend!!!!!
But wait… I am on Nicole Shelby’s blog! I simply cannot write on her blog without making some sort of reference to interactive notebooks… It just wouldn’t be right! :) I am using Nicole’s Fourth Grade Interactive Reading Notebook resource this year, and these theme-filled cupcakes will make an appearance in my students’ notebooks. I intend to make an extra set of photocopied cupcake elements for each student. For the interactive notebook entry, I will instruct them to label the cupcake graphic as the overall story, and then write their own description for theme in a filling circle. Then I will have them glue these elements in their notebook (just as they did for their craftivity, shown in the photo above). Further, rather than gluing the entire set of four cupcakes from the craftivity onto the construction paper, I will instruct them to choose one to glue onto the next page in their interactive notebook. This, of course, will give them a visual reminder of theme to refer back to throughout the year.
Let’s finish this with some fun! Let’s do a raffle giveaway! One winner will receive my Theme BUNDLE (which includes the craftivity, several worksheets, task cards, a PowerPoint, and a 7-day lesson plan)! (Of course, if you choose to purchase this bundle right away, and then later win the giveaway, I will certainly give you $12 worth of products of your choice from my TpT store!)
Before I leave you to make the most of the rest of your day, I invite you to check out my blog – Crafting Connections – I’d be absolutely honored to have one of Nicole Shelby’s followers as my own as well! 
