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From kindergarten through college, students go through a lot of paper and notebooks, as they're a key component in taking notes and learning.
Our pick for the best school notebook overall is the Five Star Spiral Notebook 1 Subject - it's durable, versatile, and offers a lot of bang for your buck.
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With a master's degree in education and years of teaching under my belt, I've seen and bought my fair share of notebooks.
Some students, school districts, and colleges have made the switch away from paper and have gone completely digital, but you still might want to get a physical notebook or two - research has shown that students who write their notes down (as opposed to typing them) perform better on tests.
As a teacher, I've seen this firsthand. Students just don't seem to internalize their notes as well when they don't write them out by hand. It's also so much easier for them to get distracted when they're using a device - it's almost impossible for them to ignore a notification.
Fortunately, notebooks are an area of your back-to-school shopping where you need to splurge to get a good product, but there are some things to consider when shopping for basics like this. To find the best notebooks, I drew on own years of experience with notebooks as a student and a teacher, and scoured the Internet for ones with the best reviews as well.
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When I was a student, Five Star was always the top notebook brand, and when I became a teacher, it continued to be my favorite as well as one of the most ubiquitous notebooks I saw. Its notebooks were and still are my go-to because they're well-made but they don't break the bank either.
While some other notebooks quickly show their wear as the school year goes on, many Five Star notebooks look good as new even on the last day of school, and I rarely see them rip or get destroyed by even the most disorganized and careless students. Their durability is largely thanks to the water resistant cover — Five Star even guarantees that the notebook will last all year.
This classic one-subject notebook has pockets inside to store handouts, worksheets, and loose paper. It also has ink bleed-resistant paper with perforations so it's easy to rip out a page. You can get this notebook in many different colors, which is perfect for organizing classes by color, and it comes in sets of three or six on Amazon.
According to one Amazon shopper, "You can't beat the built in pockets and flexible, plastic covers that are so much better for being beaten up at school or work," and a Wirecutter review called this notebook "the best you can get for the money."
Unless you're going to be writing an extensive amount, a one-subject notebook is usually enough for one class since each one has 100 pages.
Pros: Durable, water-resistant cover, built-in pockets, ink bleed-resistant paper, colorful covers are easy to organize
Cons: Some shoppers find the paper to be too thin
The best for elementary school
The Staples Primary Composition Book has solid and dotted lines to help young kids learn to write accurately, and it also features a blank space at the top of each page so students can draw and be creative.
When kids are just learning how to write, it can be overwhelming for them to imagine an entire page of lines filling up with new words. This composition notebook has a blank space at the top of each page to encourage kids to draw and be creative, which can be much less daunting.
The lines in this notebook are standard grade-school lines, which are solid and dotted lines that help students write neatly and learn the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters. Standard grade school lines help kids learn both print and cursive.
While spiral notebooks with perforated sheets are popular in the older grades, this notebook has a sewn binding so little hands don't accidentally tear out pages. It also features number and letter grids on the inside front cover to help kids learn to print and recognize their letters and numbers.
One Staples shopper noted, "Great product for little scholars and older scholars! Little ones can use it to help draw pictures as they put their sight words into full sentences. Older scholars can use their vocabulary words (in any subject) to do the same thing."
As students near the end of elementary school, they'll probably be ready to switch over to the best notebook for middle school — which brings us to our next pick.
Pros: Space to draw and color, pages are securely sewn in, grade school-ruled lines help teach proper handwriting
Cons: Cover is plain, so kids might be more drawn to notebooks with pretty colors and fun characters on the cover
The best for middle school
Mead 1 Subject Wide Ruled Spiral Notebook has plenty of space between lines to help writers who are still perfecting their technique, and you can't beat the $0.59 price.
This notebook comes in at only $0.59, so you can stock up right around the age when kids are mastering their handwriting skills and writing tons of their own stories.
In middle school when students are still perfecting their handwriting and working on writing neatly, a wide-ruled notebook is ideal. The space between lines gives them room to write larger letters. As they improve their handwriting, they'll be able to write smaller.
While I typically recommend notebooks with more durable covers, I like this pick specifically for middle school kids because these notebooks come in different colors for visual organization, and have a stripe design on the cover that's perfect for a student who is trying to look and act cool, but still wants to have some color and fun in their back-to-school supplies.
Mead also periodically comes out with fun designs; past notebooks have featured puppies, kittens, and dinosaurs. These would interest students in later elementary school and early middle school who are ready for a "big kid" notebook but are still drawn to cute designs.
In middle school, students might be asked to get a different notebook for each subject, so I like that these are cheap and come in multiple colors so they're easy to organize by class. Perforated pages also make it easy for students to tear out sheets if needed.
One Target reviewer remarked, "I bought this for my daughter and she loves it! Definitely not too childish very nice! The pricing was great!"
Pros: Wide-ruled paper is helpful to perfect handwriting skills, cheap, multiple color options, fun cover designs
Cons: Covers aren't as durable as other options
The best for high school
The Oxford 1-Subject Poly Notebook College Ruled is durable enough to withstand some abuse, and has 100 pages of college-ruled paper to accommodate the additional writing often required by high school classes.
When you get to high school, this might be the first time you'll have a teacher require a college-ruled notebook. The difference between college ruled and wide ruled is that the lines are closer together on college-ruled paper. When high school teachers assign a 1-page handwritten assignment, they might specify that it needs to be written on college-ruled paper.
Since this notebook is 1-subject and comes in multiple colors, you can easily organize your classes visually without carrying around extra papers or notebooks in the morning for a class you have in the afternoon. When my students buy 3- or 5- subject notebooks, they often end up carrying around notebooks they don't need, so having 1-subject notebooks solves this problem.
I also like that this notebook has 100 sheets. When students buy notebooks that only have 70 sheets, they sometimes run out of room by the end of the school year.
The Oxford Poly Notebook has a tough cover that's moisture- and tear-resistant. It also features a durable divider pocket inside, smear-resistant paper, and 3-hole-punched pages. As a teacher, I always prefer notebook pages that are perforated, which you'll find in this notebook as well. When teachers ask for papers to be handed in, they prefer the clean edge of a perforated page.
Oxford does make a cheaper version of this notebook with a less durable cover and I almost recommended that one since the price point is a bit lower, but as a high school teacher, I've seen too many of those notebooks get destroyed by lockers and unorganized students.
The Oxford 1-Subject Poly Notebook is Amazon's Choice for a 9-by-11-inch spiral notebook, ensuring it's a highly rated, well-priced product that's ready to ship out immediately. An Amazon shopper noted that these notebooks don't seem to have the common problem of the spiral coil coming undone, "The first thing I noticed with these was how strong the spiral coils are! It would take tools to make these spirals bend."
Pros: Durable cover and inside pocket, college-ruled lines, perforated pages
Cons: Price can add up if you have to buy multiple notebooks for various classes
Of all the notebooks I've used through my life — from elementary school to grad school — the ones I've held onto the most are the ones from my undergrad years. Most of my notebooks from elementary school and high school are long gone, but I've kept a lot of my college notebooks to refer to throughout my career.
That's why this Five Star Advance notebook is a top pick — it's durable enough to last for years, and in my case, actually has. And if for some reason it doesn't last, this notebook also has Five Star's last all year guarantee.
Some of the standout features include movable plastic dividers with pockets, a spiral guard to prevent snags, and a pen/pencil holder. This is also a great pick for college students since it's a three-subject notebook. You could use the whole notebook for a course that requires a lot of note taking and writing, or you could use it to organize similar classes together. The movable dividers also make this a versatile notebook; maybe one class only uses 50 pages while another uses 150. You won't waste pages like you would with a fixed divider.
The Spruce featured this notebook as one of the best, dubbing it "An all-in-one college note-taking bible." An Amazon shopper reacted similarly, "I have ordered these notebooks from Amazon for the past three years that I have been in college, and they are perfect."
Pros: Cloth cover over coils, moveable pocket dividers, extremely durable
Cons: The notebook as a whole can't be put in a three-ring binder, however each individual page is three hole punched