Sometimes you just need to see an idea in action. We’ll start off with some videos showing interactive notebooks from different teachers.
Videos of Spanish Interactive Notebooks
Interactive Notebook Flashcards from Sherry at World Language Cafe
Online Resources for Spanish Interactive Notebooks
PBL in the TL for Spanish 1 Interactive Notebooks
Lugar Para Pensar
Prepping Interactive Notebooks for the School Year
3. Think through your teaching philosophy and anticipate your needs. The idea is to create a notebook that fits easily with your style of teaching and your specific goals.
- If you teach with IPAs, you may like to do sections by units, with can-do statements at the beginning of each unit. Each unit section might front-load vocabulary.
- If you do storytelling, figure out a system for recording target structures and attaching printed stories, embedded readings, etc.
- If you follow a textbook, perhaps label your sections to align exactly with the book, so that students move easily between the INB and book.
4. Decide on how you will grade the notebooks (if at all). Some teachers have rubrics in the notebooks, and do periodic checks. I only grade on content, but other teachers count creativity and appearance as well.
5. Decide whether the students will take them home or leave them at school, and if so– where.
8. Define your expectations. Is your main goal efficiency in the activities you choose, or is organization and neatness a top priority? Will you plan to use them everyday, or just as needed? Will everything go in the notebook, or only essential information?
Since
I teach without a textbook, we do lots of acting, storytelling,
talking, listening to music, and reading. Having all the essentials in
one place helps give that cohesive feeling to our learning, and is
helpful to show to inquisitive parents or administration. I don’t always
know where the year will go, as classes vary so much. It’s been helpful
to have something we can tailor entirely to our interests and needs.
I would love to hear what other resources and ideas you have found helpful!
7 Comments
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I love this post! Where do I find spiral notebooks like the one in Angie's videos? Thanks!
I will ask Angie and let you know!
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Thank you for an excellent post!
Thank you so much. I'm excited to see the children's reaction to this great idea.
This is absolutely fantastic! We are finishing the school year here in Australia and I started to think about 2020. We have a book that so far is divided in some sections (teachers before I started there introduced this), but I struggled to really utilise them properly, I feel I had students kind of jumping from section to section and it did not help much students that struggle with organisation. I started to wonder how to use sections better for next year and luckily I came across this post. Thanks for sharing!