INTERACTIVE Math Notebooks! I couldn't wait!

So as I have been blogging more now that the school year has become more of a routine rather than teaching my students ABOUT the routine, I kept seeing Interactive Notebooks. This struck me as interesting as I had never heard of an interactive notebook before. At first I thought it was a computer thing, but then I dug a little deeper, and found more blogs with pictures, and realized that they are AWESOMELY not computer, and could potentially make teaching math a lot more fun for me and my students.

At the moment, I am struggling with math - it is somewhat boring to me, and I just haven't gotten into my groove with it yet. I was going to hold off on introducing these notebooks because of those reasons, but then I realized those are the reasons I SHOULD bring them into the classroom! Maybe this is just what we need! So we did a practice day with making angles. defining angles, and drawing angles when I realized it was just too many pieces, and that when I do it again, it needs to be shorter with less "pieces". Then I found this activity in my Everyday Math program that lent itself really well to being used in these awesome Interactive Math Notebooks. So I went to Staples in search of 17 spiral notebooks.

Going to Staples is already super exciting, and if I had the money, I would buy probably everything in the pen and paper sections. However, I tried to ignore the post-it notes, tabs, and markers, and head straight to notebooks. When I saw what they had, I knew that it was a sign that I was definitely on the right track with not waiting.. I found these notebooks that are just a tad wider than regular sized notebooks. This is perfect because with all of the gluing and writing in the interactive notebooks, students need more space (which was something else I realized on our practice day).

Check out what our first day with Interactive Notebooks looked like! It was fun, engaging, and meaningful learning. I am using them again next week to introduce division with remainders! I will post more as the year goes on!

Left Side of the Notebook: "Prediction" and "What I Know"

Right Side of the Notebook: the work and "What I Learned"

Have you ever used Interactive Notebooks for Math, Reading, Writing, Social Studies, Science? How did it go? What do you like best about them?