This is the best kept secret for making your notebooks a truly usable resource! At the start of your interactive notebook there should be resource pages. These are also a fantastic way to start off the year, it goes great with reviewing class expectations.
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Resource Pages
These are the first few pages of your notebook that you want your students to continually refer back to. Every teacher and every class is going to want different resource pages. The idea is that students will glue in the pages at the start of the year and can easily find them again. Here are some ideas for resource pages...
Rubrics / Grading - An overview, grading scale, rubrics, any sort of info I would normally have in my syllabus, I just put it on a small sheet and have them glue in.
Expectations - Group, class, partner, worktime, homework, literally any kind of expectation can be printed small and have them glue in and interact.
"Clock partners" - I don't know if this is a common activity but we allllllways do some sort of this activity. Essentially students are choosing partners based on the "hour" or I usually do an acronym like E.S.P.A.Ñ.O.L. They will find a partner for each letter and then throughout the year I can tell them to find their "L" partner and they can work together. Google it if I don't make any sense. It's a good way to get them out of their seats and working with new people. I do this in their notebook on page 0 so it's easily available.
Reading List - Students can draw a quick chart to track their reading or print out a specific format.
Vocabulary / Content Words - I always did the alphabet printable for Spanish.
Academic Language Script - If you don't have one already, in the INB is a great spot to keep it! We have it in our planner, but I think both would be even better.
If this feels overwhelming, you can totally skip it, or even do it at the END of the INB so you can skip this and do it later after you have wrapped your mind around what they may need. My go-to resources are the scoring rubric, the español partners, and a page to track the songs we listen to for música miércoles.
Adult Input Pages - A unique page that gets parents involved!
This is a page that we glued to the back cover of the INB. It was supposed to be filled in each week. The explanation was that they should be teaching the adult something they learned in class and the adult would sign their page. Here is a copy of our page, edit to make it work for you!
Coming up next... How to keep your INB organized without a table of contents, taking notes, interacting, and how to easily grade!
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