Adventures in Kindergarten Interactive Notebooks

So, I made the decision this year to attempt interactive notebooks. For some reason I decided to try them with my kindergarten intervention groups. My thinking was it would be a great way to organize all of our phonemic awareness and phonics activities. What I had forgotten was my kindergarteners come in with no idea how to cut or glue.  After our first activity, decorating the covers, I quickly realized I was going to have to rethink how I was going to handle this project.

The kids were so excited; however, the cutting and glueing took our entire group time (20 minutes). If you have brilliant ideas for solving this issue feel free to post them in the comments.  Our first phonemic awareness activity was matching first sounds. I decided to bring the notebooks home and do all the prep work for the kids. This is how I decided to handle the first few activities. We had a great time matching sounds and they really enjoy their notebooks. In fact after every activity they ask if they can take them home.

As we have gotten further into the school year, they are almost able to hold their scissors and cut close to the line. And they get mad at me when I do the cutting so I have begun to let them cut their own pieces.  This little girl is being very careful.

I feel like they are learning a lot and they are proud of their work, When we have a few extra minutes they go back through and practice the skills they have learned. I am creating the notebook as I go and will sell it only after it has been thoroughly tested and adjusted to work well with kindergarteners.  I have learned some important lessons already.

1. Think about the point of the lesson. The majority of time needs to be spent on the kids learning, not cutting (unless of course they are learning to cut)
2. Remember when giving young kids this type of activity they need directions, examples and help (repeat this many times).
3. The students should have time to go back and work on what is in their notebook. This allows them to continue to practice until they have it mastered.
4. The kids notebooks do not look like mine and that's okay. They are proud of them anyway.
5. Sometimes you need to step in and adjust how things are done.
   

Stay tuned for updates on this topic.