Everything You Wanted to Know About Interactive Notebooks But Were Afraid To Ask

I did a four part miniseries on the blog a few years back. Definitely start there! You can also join our Life, Love, and Lesson Plans community over on Facebook where we discuss INBs on the regular.

While I do not have a paid course yet, know that one IS in the works for 2022… stay tuned!

Everything and anything! Interactive notebooks are the bread-and-butter of my teaching. They are a staple in my instructional time with students. Students can reference their INBs in preparation for tests and quizzes, use them for additional practice of skill, or center work during remedition/small group instruction.

Personally, I have used interactive notebooks and foldable activities with children as young as 5 years old – kindergarten level. It sounds impossible, but it’s totally manageable, and the kids absolutely love it! Prep as much as you can as the teacher to minimize your headaches.

If a student is absent, our table scribe will collect any foldables that were distributed that day and record the page number that they need to be glued down on for their missing classmate. At the end of the class period, the scribe hands me the work so I can attach it to a missing class work cover sheet. When the absent student returns to class, he/she can then either look to a to a peer to model the student notebook or come see me during office hours/lunch/recess for my class notebook exemplar. For more information on notebook specific class jobs, check out my INB miniseries.

Teaching students an appropriate amount of glue to use in their notebooks is tricky. It’s one of the most important INB procedures we practice pretty much from the first day of school. I am a huge fan of Tap ‘N’ Glue caps because they only release 1 drop of liquid glue at a time.

For younger students, glue sponges are a fantastic alternative. Find a sealable and place a clean sponge inside. Pour an entire bottle of liquid glue over the sponge and cover the container, allowing the sponge to absorb the liquid glue overnight. When students need to fasten a foldable in their interactive notebooks, they simply will press the paper to the glue sponge, creating a thin layer of glue to appear.

Glue sponges last me all year long… I love them! Just make sure to occasionally spray them with a 50/50 water-bleach solution from time to time to keep them from drying out or getting moldy. At the end of the year, I let the sponge dry up and toss in the garbage for easy clean up.

It’s honestly a matter of personal preference. I’m on Team Composition Notebook; spiral bounds fall apart quickly. Composition notebooks don’t allow pages to be ripped out easily and can take quite the beating. More of my INB supply preferences can be found in the miniseries here on the blog.

For me, it’s all about routines. This is something that comes with time and practice. I like to time my students in the beginning of the year and see how long it takes them to complete INB activities. Once we have a baseline for time, I make a game out of it. We try and beat our best as the weeks progress. Eventually, I can get all of our foldable activities prepped, cut, and glued into their INBs in under five minutes.

I try and prep as much of the foldables as I can prior to distributing to my classes. For that reason, my interactive notebook templates are made entirely of straight cuts and simple folds. At most my students might have to cut a few straight lines for strips. Using the same templates regardless of the subject matter allows students to become very familiar with what gets glued down, what gets cut out, and what gets folded. We are a well-oiled machine by winter break!

It depends. I check notebooks for completion (not accuracy) on a weekly or quarterly basis, depending on my workload and mood. Occasionally I will grade individual pages of a student notebook for accuracy and use the grade for participation or an exit ticket/closure activity. Students may or may not know when/if I am grading their notebooks. The surprise element keeps them on their toes and updating INBs regularly.

LOL! Okay, okay, I got two problems here and two separate solutions. For students, attach an extra long ribbon to the back cover of the INB for a makeshift bookmark. As for teachers trying to grade INBs, you can cut the upper corner of pages already graded so that you can find new material easily.

This happens in my classes, too. You can always attach another notebook to the existing notebook. Simply use packing tape to secure the back cover of the first notebook with the front cover of the second notebook. I then take colored masking tape or patterned duct tape to secure the 2 spines together, creating one big fat notebook.

You can use extra long rubber bands and wrap your interactive notebooks to keep the pages pressed together. I have found this does help cut down on the chunk, keeping notebooks in relatively decent shape all year long.