A couple of posts ago I wrote about the importance of hands-on activities for Middle Schoolers. This hands-on engagement should move beyond projects and activities into how your students take notes every day in your class. You may have notebooks for students but are their notebooks truly hands on? One way to make notebooks for students hands-on is through interactive notebooks. Maybe you have heard of Interactive notebook maybe you haven’t, but either way, I am going to lay out some amazing interactive notebook ideas for you.

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What are Interactive Notebooks?

Interactive notebooks are writing notebooks for students to put all of their work in for the year. If you have a worksheet, a cutout, a foldable, etc. they are all kept in this notebook. It also is a way, like how its name suggests, for students to interact with the material that you are giving them.

Interactive notebooks also allow students to take visual notes or doodle notes of what they are learning in class. This visual note taking actually makes it so students better retain the ideas. Also, interactive notebooks incorporate many different learning styles at that same time so the students actually learn the material better. Plus, it has that needed concrete structure that middle schoolers still need.

Types of Interactive Notebooks

• Interactive Science Notebook-Interactive notebooks are the perfect science notebook. They have great space to draw the experiment that students are conducting. If you have instructions you can even print them on larger paper and have it fold in such a way to fit in the science notebook. It also allows them to write their observation on one side and to have pictures detailing the experiment on the other side.
• Interactive Math Notebook-Another great way to use interactive notebooks is through math notebooks. Doodle notes are incredibly helpful for math concepts that may not be visual oriented enough for middle school students. Teachers can give students doodle notes on one side and have them do their homework on another side. Teachers can also have the students do work on one side of the notebook and have them explain how they got their answer on the other side. This also incorporates writing concepts into math, which just helps students in other subjects as well.
• Interactive English Notebook-Lastly, interactive notebooks can also be incorporated into English Notebooks. Often times interactive notebooks are not seen as being a part of English but they should. English Notebooks definitely need to have hands-on elements to get students interested. There are so many great foldables to use to teach grammar skills. Students can also use one side to explain it in their own words. There are also great doodle note templates to teach students about reading concepts.

Why are Interactive Notebooks Important?

Some of you may be wondering about the effectiveness of interactive notebooks. Middle school students are still concrete thinkers. If they are taking notes on something they need to be able to relate it to things that they know. This is why interactive notebooks are effective. Also, students have different approaches that work best for them for learning, but having multiple approaches to something actually makes students learn things better. All these things make interactive journals the best bet for middle school students. Plus they have some of the advantages that you see below. 

• Teach Organization Skills– One of the great interactive notebook ideas is using them to teach organization. Interactive notebooks also teach students how to stay organized as students have to create a table of contents and keep each set of homework where it goes in the notebook. It is teaching them different note-taking systems and how to effectively use them to succeed.
• Engages Multiple Learning Styles–Interactive notebook engages many different learning styles. They have students doing things, reading and writing, they are visual. There has been research recently that shows that students learn better when they are engaging multiple styles at one time. They may have one style they gravitate towards but they can learn better if they engage all the learning styles. Interactive journals are the exact thing to get them doing that. This also shows the effectiveness of interactive notebooks.
• Easier to Grade–An added bonus for teachers is that grading is easier when everything is organized this way in one notebook. Teachers will not have a bunch of loose papers flying around. Plus teachers can decide when and how to grade them. Every day, once a week, once a month the choices are really open.

How To Make Interactive Notebooks.

Making interactive notebooks together in class is part of the learning process. It is teaching your students what you expect of them and how to organize things. If you need interactive notebook ideas and interactive notebook templates keep reading. I list many below. This is also a time to explain to students what should be included in their notebook. This is a time to go over note-taking systems, how they should make visual notes, Etc. It is also super important that students know the different parts of the interactive notebooks including a table of contents, glossary, and rubric.

• Get Notebooks- So first you have to make sure that every student has a notebook. I would suggest making sure that they are all the same size and type this just overall can make it so things are more organized. Teachers may want to pick up composition books or spiral bound notebooks for your entire class or put them on a supply list for your parents. These are not that much money and the benefit of these interactive notebooks will be much larger.
• Interactive Notebook Table of Contents- The first step is for teachers to explain what an interactive notebook is for their students and help them number the pages as well as set up a table of contents. The table of contents in the front is very important for teachers to find what they need to, and it also helps students find what they need when they are looking for a specific topic. The table of contents needs to be updated every time a student writes in the journal and setting this expectation will help students learn how to organize their interactive notebooks.
• Interactive Notebook Glossary- Another thing that is useful for your students to set up is an interactive notebook glossary. This will be in the back of their interactive notebooks, and it will help them easily see the pages for all of one topic. They can also set up a useful vocabulary list in their glossary where they can go for vocabulary that they are working on in class. You should explain to them what you want them to use the glossary for after you help them set up the table of contents.
• Interactive Notebook Rubric- Lastly your students should not exactly how their teacher will be grading these notebooks. This helps them know what the most important things are for their teacher. I would suggest some type of 4 or 3 point system that doesn’t necessarily correspond with grades but let students know how they are doing. Therefore, in a rubric, a teacher would lay out exactly what each of those points would look like. A four may mean that you have notes from class that students have reviewed by writing their reflections on them, the table of contents, glossary, and all homework for the period is done. In a rubric, a teacher should also let their students know when they will be collecting notebooks and grading them.

What are Some Interactive Notebook Ideas? 

Interactive Notebook Ideas #1 Setting Goals

One of the great things about an interactive notebook is the ability to create a growth mindset with students. One way that teachers can do this is to start off the notebook with a printable that is forming goals. This may look like something that has four different flaps with the type of goals written on it, and the student can lift up the flaps and write their goal behind it. There is something about the lifting of the flaps that makes this work better than if they were to just write down their goals they could also draw pictures on the back of the flaps or near where they wrote their goals down.

Categories for goals that I would suggest are goals you have for you this year, goals that you have for our class, goals that you have for this subject, and one thing that you hope to learn this year. Some examples of goals may be: I will learn all my multiplication tables, or I will find a book that I like, I will do all my homework, I will always make sure that I will respect my classmate, as a class we will work well in groups, etc. This is also an opportunity to teach your kids what goals are and the importance of setting them. 

Interactive Notebook Ideas #2 Doodle Notes

Another great thing to incorporate into your interactive notebooks for students is doodle notes. Doodle notes are visual notes that allow students to take notes on something while making doodles. This allows students to use both sides of their brains at once, this just overall helps the ideas stick better. I know that sometimes that it seems that when kids are doodling they are not paying attention, but that could not be farther from the truth. When kids are doodling the concepts are actually sticking in their brains better.

Doodle notes make their doodles intentional though. It helps them organize their ideas into hierarchies, Venn diagrams, chronological order etc. There are so many great doodle notes templates out there. I have four uploaded to my freebies page for access to them subscribe using the form below. The more that middle school students incorporate doodle notes into their interactive journals the more that they will be able to understand the concepts that are being taught in class. 

Interactive Notebook Ideas #3 Foldables

Foldables are one of many great interactive notebook ideas.  These are activities that involve students folding papers so there are tabs that they can flip up or things that they can pull out to give them more information on a topic. There is something about folding and pulling that makes these interactive and caters to learning styles that learn by doing. It also puts a lot of information into a smaller form. It makes it so you have plenty of information for the subject but it is not taking us as much space in your interactive journal. 

There are so many great different types of foldables for teachers to use specifically for interactive notebooks for students. Teachers would just have students paste them into their notebooks and that way they will have them with all their other work. Then students will not have to find them or lose them in a mountain of papers. 

Want to Read More?!?!

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Interactive Notebook Ideas #4 Student Side Teacher Side

The fourth and possibly one of the best interactive notebook ideas is to have one side of the notebook when it is opened be for items they get from their teacher: doodle notes, foldables, class notes, homework, etc. The other side will be for students to write what most stood out to them, what they are struggling with, their own examples of this in real life, etc.

But having a teacher’s side and a students’ side the kids are interacting with the material more themselves they are making it relate to them. If teachers check their notebooks daily or weekly too this also is a way for teachers to see where the students feel they are struggling and where the teacher should focus on. Teachers can also keep a teacher notebook alongside their student’s notebooks for examples as well as better tracking of assignments, and answer keys. 

Interactive Notebook Ideas #5 Teaching Growth Mindset

Interactive notebooks are one of the best notebooks for students because they have built-in growth mindset. A growth mindset is so important for teaching kids because it works off the idea of I may not be at the top but am I better than I was yesterday,  last week, last month, or last year. When students are working under a growth mindset they see themselves in a better light and learning becomes something that is possible for them.

An interactive journal is a record of the year. It has everything that a student has done from beginning to end. This allows students to see how far they have come. It is great to maybe once a month have the students look over what they have learned that month and discuss how they have grown. What can they do now that they couldn’t do a month ago? This allows them to see that school is actually important and is actually making them better. It also gives them a boost of self-confidence knowing that they have done something and are capable. 

Also, at the end of the year going over the whole notebook does the same thing. It helps your students to like learning more because they are seeing the fruit of their work. It also allows you to see the fruit of your work which is a great thing as well.

Interactive Notebooks Best Notebooks for Middle School Students 

Interactive notebooks are literally perfect for middle school students. It brings hands-on learning into every aspect of their learning, it gives them the concrete ideas that they need, they combine many different learning styles, and they teach amazing aspects of a growth mindset.

Interactive notebooks also help you as a teacher. They are much more organized can cut down on grading time and can show you where your students are struggling and how they feel about different topics.

I hope that you benefited from some of the interactive notebook ideas above and will be able to incorporate them into your classrooms and beyond. The students will learn better and you will also have an easier time as a teacher. These truly are the best notebooks for middle school students to be successful in their learning and studies. 

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