Inspiration for Notebooks and Journals

In the morning I usually have something for the kids to do. In the past, we've had "morning journals" where the kids write in the answer(s) to the question(s) I had on the board. Sometimes it is math related, other times it is a journal entry. This year I want to be more focused with my "morning journal" and make it more writing prompts and I will include the math things later.

The first day of school we cover our notebooks. Here is a cute tutorial that I created on an old scrapbooking blog of mine. I don't make my school ones nearly as fancy!

I basically just have the kids make them with construction paper and they do the tracing. Glue stick works perfectly fine, but I do have a tape runner on hand in my room at all times. It just makes things go quicker, ya know? The students just decorate with scraps and markers- we don't add a handle or fancy stickers but you definitely could!

I did like Jaime's idea of adding a ribbon bookmark. My kids have trouble going to the next page in their notebooks- they usually skip about 5 pages and then write their next entry.

Our basal series comes with daily questions but I think they can be pretty dry. I usually use them in conjunction with thematic or curricular topics. I also found these journal prompts from TeachMama that I might modify for ideas.

Here is the free holy grail of morning journals:

Did you hear that? It was my copy budget for the year shattering. But seriously...I could pick and choose pages, right?? LOVE this.

I would also like to make more time for journaling during my math block or use the topics with my homeroom at a different time of day. I really like these journals from Really Good Stuff:

I might try to figure out my own way to make something like this that the kids could glue into their notebook when they needed to. 

I purchased Ashley Reed's Math and Language Morning Journal Labels and they were fantastic in a pinch! Especially for substitutes.

I would really love to try foldables this year, too! This photo is from the Foldables Wiki but I have lots of foldables pins on Pinterest.

Tomorrow will be a post for classroom management! Exciting!