Hello Everyone!

I’m coming to you today with a nice idea for an interactive notebook mini project that’s perfect for the weeks leading up to Saint Patrick’s Day. Have you ever thought about using or making an interactive notebook for your ESL or ELA classroom? If you’re now asking yourself what an interactive notebook is and what it has to do with a Saint Patrick’s day mini project, then read on.

Interactive notebooks are an upgrade from the regular type of notebook that most ESL and ELA teachers use with their students. Usually we just have a nice notebook, glue in worksheets, and ask our students to take notes on the pages before or after the worksheets. Then we ask our students to bring their notebooks home to use as a study guide for upcoming tests.

An interactive notebook is similar in the sense that it does contain your students’ handwritten notes (which is essential to creating those lovely brain connections that help us to retain knowledge), the occasional worksheet, and is perfectly adaptable as a study guide. However, it’s done in a more creative way because it is filled with flaps, envelopes, games, quizzes, etc. that the students actually interact with.

It is definitely more exciting to use and look through an interactive notebook, which means that your students will be more likely to share it with their parents and siblings. Which, in turn, means that they will have more opportunities to describe what they’ve learned in your class and retain even more valuable knowledge.

If you haven’t tried them yet, I’d say that now is as good a time as any to start. You’ll want to start with your topic, main objectives, and have in mind the exact questions that’d you’d like them to master for their upcoming test. Next, your job will be to design printable pages with interactive elements like foldable flaps, pockets, tabs, or movable pieces.

At this point, you’ll add the information that you want to give them and then add prompts, questions, or activities that engage your students and encourage interaction with the content. Remember how I told you to have your main objectives in mind? That’s because the creation of an interactive notebook can develop in a million ways but we want to always make sure that there’s a point to the knowledge that we provide our students with.

Finally, you’ll need to write clear instructions for cutting, folding, and assembling the worksheet. I know what you might be thinking right now… “What about all of the potential chaos that this cutting, pasting, and coloring will add to my classroom?” The good news is that all of that cutting, pasting, etc. is never chaos, it’s actually the part where your students will forget that they are actually learning. Instead, they will just think that they are enjoying themselves by building something that they can be proud of and show off to their other friends and loved ones. Plus, the beauty of all of this is that once you do it a few times, and set in place a few classroom rules, your students will be able to gain more and more independence and produce such work with more and more fluency.

When you’re done with your project you can then ask your students to make mini presentations to their peers and/or family members. Remember, the more times they share their work, the more connections to it they are making and the greater the possibility that they will retain the new knowledge.

Don’t have time to make your own Saint Patrick’s Day mini project in the form of an interactive notebook? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered! Click here to go straight to my TPT page and try out what I’ve created. My Saint Patrick’s Day mini project includes the lesson plans that you’ll need, worksheets and even PowerPoint presentations that you can use in class.

I love teaching this way so much that I believe that once you try it, you’ll never go back to the straight forward notebook style teaching :)

Wishing you a great day!

Danielle