Standard 2: Knowledge of Content and Instructional Planning

With one cut and a few folds, this paper transforms into a mini flip book that students can keep on a ring for each unit.

The use of the interactive notebooks allows students to build on their knowledge all year, and gives them an engaging way to take notes. It helps the visual learners as well as kinesthetic learners by having multiple ways to record and view their notes. By using an interactive notebook, students can personalize it how they want, and also have all of their notes in one place to keep subject matter accessible. By having a sample notebook as well, students can see what they will be learning throughout the year to ensure they are staying on track. (Standards 2.1, 2.3, 2.5, 2.6)

This graphic organizer is one used in the Animal Research Project unit on day two. This unit incorporates reading, writing, and science skills and consists of students reading about an animal, filling out this graphic organizer with important information from their article, and then writing their own paragraph on the animal. By using this graphic organizer, students are pulling important information from the text to plan for their writing, while also building their knowledge of science vocabulary words such as "Habitat" and "Classification." This activates their prior knowledge from science, while also getting them ready to write their own piece. (Standards 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6)