Interactive Notebook Activities for Secondary Grades



I'm happy to link up with Mel and Gerdy to share the interactive notebook activities that I have created!

I teach general education Language Arts in 8th grade, but since I am also a Special Needs teacher, I seem to get a fairly heavy concentration of students with special needs.

That means I usually have to break concepts down into very structured steps.  Essay writing is no exception and that's how PROS was born!


To teach the components of essays, I knew I had to be strategic.  First, my boys LOVE sports.  IF I could connect writing to sports, I'd be able to hook them.  Plus, it makes the components easier to remember!  

As I taught the different components, I added a piece to the visual display.




Students have a corresponding flipbook in the their interactive notebooks to record their knowledge:




Then to specifically address the organization of the essay, I created this:



My students need a pattern to follow in order to be able to write essays as it is not enough for them to understand the components without a road map.  So, we learned the organization by first going over what should be in each paragraph with Cornell notes, then read some texts and used interactive notebook foldables to practice identifying and creating parts of paragraphs.




This product has an interactive notebook foldable for the introduction, the body and the conclusion (not to mention the texts, Cornell notes, checklists and graphic organizers).

So maybe you teach all advanced students or maybe you have some students that really need structure.  If you're like me, then this might just help you!

Thanks for stopping by!