Interactive Writing Notebook for First Grade

Today I wanted to share my Interactive Writing Notebook for First Grade.   It is jam-packed with writing projects for first grade.  The activities are Common Core aligned, rigorous, and FUN for students.

The notebook covers numerous writing and grammar skills that are taught in first grade: beginning sentence writing, labeling, brainstorming ideas, writing narratives, informative writing, opinion writing, using transition words, how-to writing projects, letter writing, publishing, punctuation, questions, common and proper nouns, editing, adjectives, and poetry.

The notebook starts with ideas for the beginning of the year.  Who? Doing What? is a great place to start the year in first grade.  It helps students to learn to write telling sentences that contain both a naming and telling part.

Students write a naming part for the sentence under the first flap, and a telling part under the second flap.

 Once students have mastered telling sentences with naming and telling parts, we move on to Who? Doing What? Where? which helps them to add a bit more detail to the sentences

Labeling is a great non-fiction project for the beginning of first grade.

Writing about their own lives is a great place for students to start for narrative writing. 

 First Graders often struggle with ideas to get them started.

First graders also love to do opinion writing!  I love that this project has three levels.  I start the year with students writing a topic sentence, and two reason sentences.

Then we progress to a topic sentence with three reasons.

By the middle to end of the year, we can also add a closing sentence!  The great part- we have taught the students to write a five sentence paragraph!

The notebook contains 12 different opinion topics that appeal to first graders, plus a blank template for creating additional opinion topics.

I'll be back soon to share more ideas from the notebook. If you would like to learn more about it, I have created a sampler pack of the notebook that you can download free from my TPT store.

          

Field Trip Must Have!

My daughter and I just returned from an overnight Girl Scout camping trip.  We had a lot of fun and can't stop singing camp songs "Bubble gum, Bazooka, zooka, bubble gum"!  It was a little soggy and muddy at camp, it has been pouring rain here for the last week.  Luckily, the rain decided to stay away while we were there. But... I am not looking forward to cleaning our four pairs of muddy shoes!

I got this nifty organizer in the Target Dollar Spot ($3 item) to take to camp, and it dawned on me while I was walking around how GREAT it would be for field trips!  First, it is waterproof. (The main reason I bought it!)  It is a great size, easily holds 8 1/2" by 11" papers.  It is made from heavy duty plastic, and I think it is super cute too (I love everything in the Dollar Spot)!

I love how one side has a completely clear pocket, perfect for holding a schedule, class list, etc.  It also holds A LOT! Here is what I had inside: all of my camp schedules and paper work (at least 10 pages), the girls' badges they earned, a small first-aid kit, cough drops, a sharpie, small tissue packs, chap stick, a small germ gel, my cell phone, and medicine boxes.  It all fit in easily!  It had a wrist strap, but that broke off after a while. It was still easy to tuck under my arm and carry around.

I was thinking about how many of these same things I would be carrying around in a bag for a field trip.  I love how a field trip schedule would be easy to see on the clear side.  I would also add a whistle, some band-aids, a small pack of baby wipes, and name tags.  What else would you add?

Interactive Science Notebook

I have had several people asking me what I have students write under the flaps in my Science and Social Studies Interactive Notebooks.  Today I am sharing some photographs of what you could have your students write underneath the flaps of my Science Notebook.  These are just ideas, I think it is very important for students to synthesize their own learning, and make decisions about what they think should be under the flaps. I always do some kind of activity with the content whether it is a read-aloud book, our text book, a video, power point slide show, etc. Also, the projects are designed to be flexible, so you can tailor them to your curriculum and standards.


Some projects require no writing, they are simply cut and glue projects:

 

 A Week of Weather is designed to be part of the class recording a week of weather.  Each day, students will observe the weather, and choose one to three types of weather to glue for that day.

I love this project!  It helps students see how the earth rotates around the sun.  Just be sure to not glue the Earth circle!

 I don't have the students do any writing on this project, I just want them to start learning the names and order of the planets.  You could have them write something about the planet on the backside of the flap.

 You could have students write about each label, if you wanted.  

I like to just discuss the different things that scientists do.  

 

 In this project, students sort the animals into the correct animal group.

Students sort and glue food into the correct food groups.

Students love this project!  

They choose one food from each food group to put in a lunch box, or on a school lunch tray.

Here are some ideas for the projects that require writing.  

 

  

In this project, students can describe what each step means.  

Another way to use this project, is to do an experiment, and write specifically about that experiment.

 

 

There is a season project for all four seasons.

 

There are 14 different scientists projects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are 9 different habitat projects.

I hope this helps give ideas of what can be written for the projects. 

If you would like to check out the Science Notebook in my TPT store, you can click here.