Interactive Notebooks: Unlock the Potential

Interactive notebooks have been on our radar for several years now. In most classrooms, you'll see INB's full of information, from guided notes to cut-and-glued anchor charts. INB's are often used as a resource for students to reference when reviewing content, however, they have potential to be so much more!

How can we help students process what they put in their INB's? The answer is OUTPUT. Instead of simply filling notebook pages with information, have your students take time to process that information and leave some sort of output on the page. 

Here is an example of a common INB entry. Student A glued in a diagram and filled in the blanks with teacher guidance. Is this learning likely to stick? Probably not. 

Now take a look at Student B's notebook. The same diagram was used, however, Student B then talked to a partner about a real-life example of this process and wrote about it in his own words.  

Including output in interactive notebooks gives students a chance to make meaning of what they've learned and make connections that will make learning stick. 

Other examples of output include:

• Drawing a picture to represent learning
• Writing a letter to an absent student to explain what was learned
• Making a connection to a real world example 
• Writing a one-sentence summary of the learning
• Creating a hashtag that sums up the content 
• Make an A-Z list of related concepts