Thanksgiving Interactive Notebook Activities to Spark Student Motivation & a Pin It to Win It!

Happy November, Friends!

I can't believe how fast the time is flying! :)

I am so excited to be linking up with my good friend Joanne for her Sparking Student Motivation Linky! Every Saturday she has awesome ideas for getting students motivated! Be sure to check out all her fun ideas on her blog!

Today I want to share a way that I get my kids excited about reading and grammar skills and incorporate the holidays at the same time. I absolutely LOVE interactive notebooks!!! I started using them last year, and fell in love with how simple, fun, and effective they are. All my students' learning is organized and accessible in one notebook for each subject. It makes it so EASY for them to look back when they have questions, and it makes it EASY for me to help them take ownership of their learning. 

Okay, so many of you know that I love cutesy stuff! And you know that I LOVE the holidays! And I LOVE interactive notebooks! But, I also LOVE teaching and coming up with ways to incorporate the cutesy and the holidays with Common Core Standards! 

So...........I put all of these LOVES together and came up with Holiday Themed Interactive Notebook Activities to use when teaching reading and language arts skills. But, I didn't want them to be limited to just one book or one text so I created them so that I could use ANY text I wanted! 

I have created a Halloween set and a Thanksgiving set. My students loved the Halloween activities! And I am so excited to start using my Thanksgiving activities this week! (I'm working on my December set now!)

For example, I wanted to teach a lesson about character traits and using text evidence. But, I also wanted to use one of my favorite October books, Stellaluna. So, I pulled out the character trait flipbook from my Halloween set and together my students and I recorded our thinking in our reading notebooks. 

Then, I wanted my students to independently practice this same skill but with another of my favorite Halloween texts- The Spider and the Fly. So, they were able to use the same foldable but with a different text! They loved it because they were familiar with it, and it was fun. And I loved it because it was a great and easy way for me to assess who was able to make inferences about character traits with text evidence.  :)

We are using these flip books to review grammar skills- because, yes, my fourth graders are still having trouble remembering what a noun is, or a verb, or a conjunction, etc... The flip books are easy to use but also motivating....more fun than a worksheet (yes, I still have to use some worksheets, but these graphic organizer flip books are a great tool for introducing and reteaching skills!)

I am looking forward to using these Thanksgiving activities this month with my favorite turkey books like A Turkey for Thanksgiving and Turk and Runt.   

 

There are lots of ways to use these interactive notebook activities- previewing, introducing, reteaching, as an assessment grade, in a center, for partner work, etc.... So, I guess it is sparking student motivation, but ALSO TEACHER motivation!  :)

If you would like to win these Thanksgiving Interactive Notebook Activites, please

PIN IT TO WIN IT!  

I will choose 2 winners on Monday!  Good Luck!

Here's all you need to do:
1) Pin the Pack on Pinterest (please make sure it is the image directly above).
2) Leave a comment with your email and the Pinterest ID in the comment (all you have to do is copy the URL after you pin it to your board and then paste it into the comment section).

That's it!  I will use a random number generator to find 2 lucky winners. Thanks for entering!  :O)

Thank you for reading about these interactive notebook activites!  Don't forget to check out all the other ideas on Joanne's blog!

Have a super weekend!
Stacia  :)