Inside our Interactive Phonics Notebook and Dictionary!

I'm baaaaackkk!! 

No, I'm not talking about back to blogging....I'm back to blonde!

It's only been a few weeks, but my dark-chocolate brown hair that I loved so much when it first came out, did not do so well staying in my hair. boo! So, I just went back to my "roots" haha!!

Ok, the real reason for this post... I want to show you how I have been managing my Hands-On Phonics Notebook and Dictionary in class. 

(check out my other posts HERE to see how we got it set up in the beginning of the year and THIS post to see more about what is in the pack.).  If you haven't noticed by now, one of my passions about teaching is phonics...it's the ROOT of reading and writing. If you know the rules, you can sound out pretty much ANY word when you're reading or writing. ok, I know that's a little fib because we ALL know there are exceptions to every rule...but that's why I also make my students learn to spell sight words for their spelling.

  Each section is a different color, that way they can easily find where they need to be in the notebook (orange- dictionary, green - categories, yellow - phonics). We use the dictionary part almost every day! The students know to use it as a resource when writing and want to know how to spell a word, we write or highlight our spelling and sight words, I just love this section!

Here is a few shots of what we did today...

She's writing in our sight word for this week...the word wasn't already on the list that they glued in in the beginning of the year.

If the word IS in on the list, then they highlight it (which, of course, they LOVE doing!)

We do this every week with our words. Also, if a student wants to know how to spell something, they first have to look in their dictionary, and if it's not in there, then they come to me (well, raise their hand) with their dictionary and a pencil and I will write it in there for them. It's a BEAUTIFUL system!

The next section is the Category words...

we haven't added too many words to these pages, but I have some ideas on what to change/add for next year's notebooks!

The next section is the Phonics section - our most used section.

This is where we write the rules for the sounds, sort words, write words that we find on "hunts" or sort as a whole class. Since our district has changed our spelling continuum, it doesn't really follow a "phonics" pattern all the time, but I still use it for learning about plurals and verb tenses, since technically those are rules to follow for spelling, right? So, some of the pages we use come from the headers in the phonics notebook, and some of the of the pages come from other phonics packs that I have. 

Here are just a FEW of the pages that we have so far in our notebooks.

sorting FLOSS words

Open and Closed Syllable words

(sometimes there's a lack of cuteness when there's a lack of time! right!?)

These are the long vowel pages...they came from the phonics notebook pack...I left a LOT of space on the page because we're going to come back and do vowel teams on the long vowel pages.

Changing y to i....

Irregular past tense...

Ok, so I hope that helps you to see inside our notebooks a little better!