Hey hey there! We know that many of you are enjoying long and lazy summer days. We also know that many of you are still trucking away in your classrooms and our thoughts are with you! We wanted to give you some extra insight into Rooted in Reading and especially give you an idea of how we (and by we I mean Katie because I lack in the Organization department BIG time!) set up our interactive notebooks with students.
If you have NO idea what we are talking about when we say “Rooted in Reading” read THIS POST here to see all about the 2nd grade version. You can also look at the Bundle or the August unit by itself. The previews are very detailed, so we hope that answers a lot of your questions!
If this is your first time using interactive notebooks, having them organized from the beginning can help you avoid a lot of headaches down the line. Most 8 and 9 yr olds need the extra help with organization (well, actually… I need a lot of help with organization, ha!), and I think these notebooks will be a great way to scaffold this skill!
Step 1: Clearly mark the covers of your notebooks. We always had several notebooks for different subjects so this helped lessen confusions. We have included a color and black and white cover that you can print on bright paper if you would like!
Step 2: Print out tab dividers on Astrobright paper AND laminate. We promise the laminating step is key to having these bad boys last! If you have a parent volunteer that helps this would be an AWESOME project for them. In the past, we have always had parents that would volunteer from home even when they couldn’t come to school. Send home one example and all of the supplies and let parents take part in the organization fun!
Step 3: After cutting dividers out, use clear packing tape to put your dividers into your notebooks. The order we chose was Anchor Charts, Comprehension Activities, Vocabulary Words, Daily Deep Dive, and Grammar. Before doing this you will want to think about how long you want to use the notebooks. We personally like a notebook per semester so we put enough pages between each divider to get us through the semester! We also suggest lining up the tabs so only the bold words stick out the side- cover up the cursive word with the clear tape. If you are using a standard size composition notebook AND all five tabs, you will also need to overlap them a little!
If you use Rooted in Reading for 2nd Grade, I would just simplify this and use only the Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar Tabs. Less is more with the little ones!
Step 4: Glue in the book list to the inside of the notebook on the first page. Either one or two copies depending on how many books you plan on covering using this spiral. We LOVE this addition because we think students will love looking back over the list of books that they have so lovingly studied this year. We also think the genre column is a key component for test-taking skills!You can find all the materials we used in a freebie found in Katie’s store Here! If you have other great ideas for setting up notebooks, we would love to hear them! If you are on instagram use our hashtag “RootedinReading3rd” (#RootedinReading3rd or #rootedinreading) and we will definitely check you out!
Phew now that we have those kids all set up, we can talk about YOU- the teacher! Katie’s personal favorite way to store our units is in binders. She spent a couple hours one morning and printed all four weeks of August out. She went ahead and laminated the anchor charts and prepped the nonfiction mini-readers so the students can see an example. Don’t they look pretty?!?! I’m not even going to show you how I organize a unit. Picture ziploc baggies with materials popping out! I’ll just leave you with a look at how Katie organizes!
We even have binder spines for each book so you can feel extra organized!You can find everything you need for organizing your teacher binders in the freebie below!
If you have previously used Rooted in Reading for 2nd Grade OR you are planning to use it in the future, we have started making updates to our units. So far we have August, September, and October updated. If you want to spice up your organization, we have all of the updated covers and binder spines for 2nd Grade HERE!
Other Blog posts you may want to check out to learn more about Rooted in Reading:
I love the spines and covers for Rooted in Reading but I purchased your Magic of Math bundle and some of the units did not have a front cover. Will you be creating similar spines and covers to coordinate with that bundle? Thanks in advance!
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I love the spines and covers for Rooted in Reading but I purchased your Magic of Math bundle and some of the units did not have a front cover. Will you be creating similar spines and covers to coordinate with that bundle? Thanks in advance!
Mrs. Self, you can find the covers here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Magic-of-Math-2nd-Grade-Binder-Spine-Labels-and-Notebook-Covers-2698433