Why I stopped using Interactive Notebooks and What I do Instead

Can we talk about Interactive Notebooks? When I first heard about and saw interactive notebooks, I was blown away. I attended a Professional Development session on Interactive Notebooks and I ran home and did hours of research and started formulating a plan to implement them the next school year.

In an effort to align my notebooks with our Florida Standards, I designed my notebooks to be organized by standard. Students tagged each new standard with a Post-It tab and began each section by writing the learning goals for that standard. Then they cut and glued all kinds of foldables and vocabulary activities, and we stuck post-it all over, and drew diagrams and folded everything over and over and glued some more.

All. Of. The. Glue.

If I told you how many times I stood in line at the Dollar Tree with an entire cart full of glue sticks and got side-eyed by very confused cashiers who must have thought that I was nuts... you might not believe me. 

I once uttered the words "please don't glue your hands to your face" to a student. A 7th grader. 

Student notebooks were gorgeous. Teachers raved about our interactive notebooks that year. Administrators took photos. District representatives visited my classroom and thumbed through student notebooks and praised me for how wonderful they were.

And then student test scores came back.

They were not good.

I didn't abandon interactive notebooks at that point, after all, I had been praised continuously all year for my student notebooks. Other teachers took pictures of them and used them as a model for their own classroom!

I started the next year following the same plan I had the year before. I was all-in for interactive notebooks.

And then one day, it took nearly an entire class period for sudents to cut out and glue in some foldable activity, I don't even remember which one now. I picked seven glue sticks up off of the floor. Students were arguing over scissors. I looked around at my classroom, which lay in shambles under a pile of colorful paper scraps. 

And I was done.

I realized then just how much time we were wasting cutting and gluing and cutting and gluing and picking up paper scraps, and pulling aready-glued-down foldables off of pages because a student glued it on the wrong page, or glued it upside-down, how much time I was spending mediating arguents between students who were fighting over a certain pair of scissors or a certain glue stick. I realized how much instructional time I was losing. I realized how much of my own personal time I was losing creating foldables and activities that met the "interactive notebook criteria." How much money I was spending on colorful paper. 

And then I had the really hard conversation with myself - maybe the loss of instructional time was a contributing factor in my students' poor test scores the year before. 

And I was done.

After that, I ditched interactive notebooks. Yep. Mid-year. Just like that.  Because I am a grown up and I can do what I want. 

I explained to my students that we were going to make some changes because what we were doing just wasn't working. They weren't too sad about it. Truth be told, I'm not even sure that they were thrilled to be cutting and gluing... and cutting and gluing... 

So what's next?

I needed a replacement for notetaking after ditching interactive notebooks, so I did some research. My school has a School Improvement Plan that includes the use of Cornell Notes, but I had never attempted to use them before. They didn't make sense to me. It wasn't how I learned to take notes when I was in school and I couldn't conceptualize how exactly they could be effective in a Language Arts classroom. 

Can I just say - thank God for Pinterest! I found so many resources just by doing a simple search. It turns out, Cornell Notes can be effectively used to teach ELA concepts and standards, and I was SO excited. The kind of excited that I was when I learned about Interactive Notebooks - except with less glue. 

Students now have binders that contain their Cornell Notes. We still divide their binders up by standard just like we did with Interactive Notebooks. Each section begins with a page of Cornell Notes that features the standard and/or skill and also includes the Learning Goals for that standard. Cornell Notes also include relevant vocabulary, doodles, drawings, diagrams, etc. Cornell Notes pages are slid into a page protector that serves as the divider for that section. Following the pages of Cornell Notes are mentor texts, guided reading activities, vocabulary activities, and any other relevant materials.

Student binders also include a student data section, which had previously been housed in spiral-bound data books that I spent hours and hours creating. 

You can read about how I use Cornell Notes in my classroom and see many photo examples of my Cornell Notes pages by reading my other post about How I Effectively use Cornell Notes in my Language Arts Classroom

And now we don't spend wasted time cutting and gluing and folding and re-gluing, and cleaning up a mess.

I have saved so much instructional time that we are able to do other activities like Harkness and Lit Circles! We spent easily twice as much time on writing instruction this year as I have in previous years, and students are using and referring to their notes more than they ever did before. 

Yes, Interactive Notebooks are gorgeous. I'm sure that they are incredibly useful for the right students. I am sure that many teachers adore them and are having great success.

I was not one of them. And it's okay if you are not one of them, too. If something isn't working in your classroom - ditch it. Because you are a grown-up and you an do whatever you want.