The beginning of the school year always brings training days... long hours of sitting and listening. Bah! But last year I attended a Dinah Zike Foldables training and it was great. As I cut, folded and glued, I pondered the possibilities. I decided to tackle one subject area and focus on creating Interactive Journals for reading. 
My reading adoption is Texas Treasures and I wanted my journals to focus on the skills taught with each story. I have to admit that the first few entries were a bit of a struggle. My students had never worked with interactive journals before. I had to guide them step by step. The craziest, most difficult part was attempting to keeping 25 second graders from cutting off the tab, or gluing down the foldables' movable parts. Once my students got the idea however, creating our journal entries became much easier and I only had to run around to help a few of them.
I discovered it was important to create my own journal along with my students. At first I was afraid they would just "copy" mine and I would stifle their creativity, but I found that through my modeling, their journals came alive. I soon found myself using some of their ideas in my journal entries!
What surprised me was how much my students loved our journals. We would build our journals on Monday, gluing all the parts in place, and then we would respond and decorate them with "elements from the story" during our reading workstations and any other moment of extra time we had. My students told me journaling was one of their favorite things to do. How many times do you hear that! In fact, as I was putting our journal entry together for the very last story in Treasures, one of my students said, "Is that the last one?... I really like them!" This was a surprise to me as his journals were never that spectacular, but he appreciated them and he was proud of his work. Their journals became one of their prized possessions and something they would pull out to show visitors. 
Additionally, I loved the way our journals became a teaching tool. Not only was I teaching reading strategies in a new and unique way, it was cool to be able to turn to a student who asks, "What does inference mean?" and tell him to, "Look it up in your journal." Awesome!!
I have published my journals at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. For a journal FREEBE, click on the picture to the right or the link I LIKE FREE - Fix-Up Strategies. I added this entry to our journals to help my students understand that good readers use fix-up strategies as they read. It goes hand in hand with our school district's initiative, CSR or Collaborative Strategic Reading. CSR is a required strategy in most subject areas at our district. For free CSR posters click I LIKE FREE - CSR Posters.
I encourage you to take the journal plunge. Interactive Journals are worth the time and effort, no matter what grade or subject area you teach and you may find that you learn a thing or two, too!
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