Interactive Notebook (Pt. 4) - Taking Notes

One of the main purposes of the Interactive Notebook is having notes all in one place and easily accessible. This provides students with a sense of ownership and confidence in their learning. Let's talk about how the notebook can support note-taking.

*Quick disclaimer - our school is an AVID demonstration school and we practice AVID strategies school wide. The majority of my note-taking strategies I learned were based on AVID professional development and strategies. Big Fan! Let me know if you want to hear more.

When I sat down to write this I immediately got overwhelmed. Taking notes is such a huge task with so many steps. This post will mostly be about the interactive notebook but maybe my next series can be a break down of note-taking? Hmm...

Student Example Notes

Tips on taking notes in the INB

• MODEL!!!!! - I'm not yelling, it's just super important.

• Model... - Take notes in your teacher notebook in front of them. I am extremely direct, I show them when to skip a line, what squares to draw, etc. Do not assume they know how to take notes.

• Model - no seriously, even if they are seniors in high school, start the year by modeling your notes.

• Stop frequently to give them time to process or catch up. I would stop about half way through and have them share notes with their elbow partner to check spelling and to highlight important info.

Student Example Notes

Where do notes go?

For the Interactive Notebook any input goes on the right side. It is very important to stay organized and only do notes on the right side, even if you are skipping some left-side pages.

I want to go back to that underlined statement. Any input goes on the right side. You can absolutely have them glue or tape texts into their notebook, graphic organizers, infographics, we would even tape in pictures from artists! All this goes on the right side, or the even numbered pages. (how to number pages was in part 1)

Student Example Notes

What if my notes go on to two or more pages?

This is a common concern, and you might not like my answer...

My best answer is don't! Try to chunk your content into small pieces that are about 1 page in length. As you will see in the next part, students need to interact with each page, so chunking is a great way for them to process each section.

You can say Theme (Part 1) and do a page of notes, then pause for interaction. Theme (part 2) would be a new right side page and new interaction. Or even more beneficial break down theme into two different topics and two different sets of notes with different EQs.

This is my experience from middle school, this may be different in high school as ideas become more complex. Let me know what you do if you have a long set of notes!

*I always have students who write big or skip too may lines, for them I always have notecards handy and they just finish their notes on a notecard and tape it in. It's not perfect because they seem to always get lost, but it's an option!

How to plan out your notes

As I said in part 3 of this series, I used tabs to organize my notebooks. (go back to the best hack ever for interactive notebooks!)

When I planned a unit I would lay out what my students needed to know by the end, then break it up into "sets of notes." It really took a few years of trial/error to get it down and I'm still making edits!

Once I had my "sets of notes" or big topics, I would create my tab with those laid out already. It was a great way to keep me accountable and on track for each unit. It also made lesson planning a breeze because our days revolved around taking notes and interacting/practicing them.

Other content examples that would go on the Right Side

ELA - Teacher given notes on theme/writing an introduction/characterization/etc., a text, a prompt, graphic organizer.

Math - Teacher given notes on a topic, a graph or chart, a story problem, a graphic or image.

Please let me know what else I missed when it comes to taking notes in the notebook and if you want more details on how we did the 5 phases of note-taking in class!

Coming up...interacting with your notes! (the left side) and how to grade the notebook!