Integrating Social Studies and Reading With Interactive Reading Journals CCSS.RI.1

Although each of the grade levels that I worked with last school year used interactive journals, each one focused on a different topic.  To really integrate informational text, the focus for this grade level was the Middle Ages.  I love to draw.  Sometimes I create illustrations that students copy to accompany their own notes.  I really try to integrate Common Core Standard RI.5 with deals with illustrations and text features with most lessons.  Instead of knowing about illustrations only, this gives students the opportunity to understand how illustrations contribute to text meaning.

Sometimes, I print copies of pictures and ask them which one best supports the meaning of the text and makes ideas even clearer.

The thing that I love most is that interactive notebooks actually become beautiful books that the students create gradually over the course of the school year.  I never have to talk to ANYONE about keeping up with their notes.  Students get so much pride of ownership.

The focus of this lesson was to record and discuss details from the unit.  At this point in the lesson, we looked at medieval education.

As always, we started out our lessons with five minutes of Daily Common Core Reading Practice.  This has been a huge help because it gets students familiar with the wording and true meaning of each standard. It is a great activity that is helpful for progress monitoring and only takes five minutes at the beginning of class to complete.  Click Here for Daily Common Core Reading Practice