Interactive Notebooks

[Kristi Barber]

I have been throwing around the idea of using interactive notebooks this year with my 7th and 8th graders. I have seen a couple blog posts about the use of the interactive notebooks and am intrigued. I was wondering if anyone uses these and exactly how they work. Do you have directions you give out? Rubric? Also how is the response from students and parents? Any help would be great. Thanks!

[Kristi Barber]

I have just searched on Google and read up on interactive notebooks. Brian's link above has some great ideas, I still need to check out Laticia's links. I get hung up on taping worksheets on a notebook page. I see it as a waste of a piece of notebook paper. However I do like the idea of everything being sequential and organized. I do believe it is a very important skill to teach middle schoolers to get organized and to process their notes, not just copy them down. Lets collaborate and crank this out before September! Hopefully we get some veteran interactive notebook users to contribute as well as newbies!

[Brian Thomas]

Some thoughts on taping/glue/sequencing:

• Would it be helpful if TCI put together a little video that shows several ways teachers put their notebooks together as far as taping/glue and such?  Would love your feedback on that.
• Since students may use different notebook page sizes and some students write larger/smaller, it's hard to get everything on a single page sometimes.  A workaround is to tell a student if their work spills over onto another page, that when they number the page it should be the same page number as the start page.  So for example, if I ask a student to write their process assignment on page 5 in their ISN and a student has to use two pages to complete it, then the student will write the page numbers "5a" and "5b" at the top.  That keeps the page numbers consistent for the student and still organized for you as a teacher when looking at their ISN. 

[Kristi Barber]

I think it would be helpful! I consistantly see suggestions to have sample notebooks for the students to look at but since this will be my first time I don't have any! I am also wondering what student/parent reactions to this approach is? I plan on starting by giving lots of in class time to complete reflection activities then slowly weaning them off so much class time. Are the students supposed to work on the notebooks almost daily? Do most teachers grade the notebooks by chapter,unit, or per grading period? Are random checks a good idea? I want to this with 7th grade, which struggle with organization. Any more help/samples would be great.

[Brian Thomas]

Teaching is a private practice....so I will share only from my own experience.  I taught 7/8 for 12 years using the ISN.  For me, it was a must to use that notebook daily.  My rationale was that if they use it daily, they will place a greater importance on keeping it up to date and looking better as they know they will need it.

 

On grading, I seemingly tried a new approach each year.  It's very challenging to check notebooks frequently when you have 120-160 students.  Initially, I tried checks every couple of weeks by staggering which class notebooks I graded on certain days...so that it wasn't overwhelming.  I found that to be hard to keep up as life, extra-curriculars get in the way of best intentions.  What seemed to work for me was when I got away from trying to check every page.  Instead, I would check a sample of 5 pages work; 3 I would tell the kids in advance I would be looking for, and 2 that I would tell them were mystery pages (to build in accountability to the total ISN).  Using this method, I was able to grade a notebook in a minute or two, and built in a day of deskwork a couple times a quarter where I could do all of this in class and not at home.  So, I had checked notebooks a total of 8 times during the year, collected grades, and stayed sane.

 

Students who keep up a great notebook get their payoff on their assessments as it was always the students who had cleaner, more accurate, organized notebooks that scored better.

 

My several cents here....hope it helps! :)

[Leticia Hallmark]

If you want, I can take some pictures and post for you...but not until August when I get back to school.  We're locked out right now while cleaning and debugging takes place. :)  There are tons of pictures on the web too.  I'd be glad to send you some too - I have sooo many, I actually had to throw some out last year.

[Leticia Hallmark]

Yes very helpful....pls do! :)

[David Wallace]

I am using the ISN for the first time this year, I will post the rubric I am using. I think it would be great for us to keep in touch regarding the notebooks so we can share successes and failures. A couple of things I have thought of...

1. Why tape/glue the pages in, why can't they just be 3 hole punched and placed in the correct spot if you use 3 Ring binders as opposed to say a notebook. Binders will stay neater and will allow students to move things around if some how they get out of order.

 

2. Do not try to keep all kids on the same page, have a running list of the assignments needed and in the correct order. As long as they have those in that order they are fine.

 

3. I will be grading 2 times per quarter, but this will also cut down on all the time spent grading classwork or homework, it will all be checked in the notebook, maybe a random check every now and again for extra credit, but we will save time on average I think. 

 

4. I have read that some teachers early on will let students use the notebooks on a quiz to show them the value of taking good notes and keeping the notebook neat.

 

I have a ton of bookmarks at school, wish I could get to them from here! 

Here is my rubric.

[David Wallace]

Here is an example of one that I will be using with my class as long as it is still up. Great idea to take pictures each day/week of the assignments that way they can be posted to a class website.

https://sites.google.com/a/mystma.org/mistercanton/digital-isn

[Leticia Hallmark]

fabulous example - we don't have textbooks so ours are arranged by unit...probably about 5-6 chapters (if we had a book) in each section. :) Great idea too - think I'll use it next year.

[Nathan Wellborne]

Hey Kristi,

 

By far the most important thing to know about the "Interactive Student Notebook" is that we ALL do it differently. All 6 teachers on my USH team officially "used the ISN," but every single one of us had different procedures for grading, storage, materials, assignments, etc.

 

I always tell the story in trainings that the first year I tried it, I gave up in November and thought it was a nightmare. Didn't realize it was because I was copying the procedures of another teacher! The next year I revised my procedures and the ISN became my own and I never looked back. But probably took about 3 years total to refine procedures to my liking...

 

So gather as many ideas as you can, but then simply choose what you think will work best for you and go for it! At semester break, CHANGE anything you don't like and try again in the spring (I was worried the students would care that I changed procedures but they were usually thankful because if it ain't working for the teacher, nobody's happy!)

 

Finally, in my view, these are the only three non-negotiables in an ISN: (1) Preview assignments that link to prior knowledge, build concepts, and get kids excited, (2) Graphically organized notes--reading, lecture, video notes, (3) varied and creative Processing assignments to see if student "got" the material. All the other procedures are personal preference...

 

Here is my basic "ISN procedures" page for students and an accompanying "setup" PPT presentation for the beginning of the year:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DHpGtD6qJywhn85sBHmZxS0yLDSYyJu...

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXvWyqp2C2coZGY4NDk5OWpfMG...

[Kristi Barber]

I am going to use the interactive notebook but and leaning toward using binders. Any thoughts on using binders? Has anyone used these and found it wasn't a good idea? Let me know.

[Malissa Gore]

Hi Kristi,

 

I have used ISN's for the past two years.  No matter how much you prep going in, it's trial and error to fit the notebook to your personality and your class.  I tried to go the ISN route 3 years ago and used a binder that year.  The pages tear out way to easily as the students use the binders more and more.  I know a high school teacher who requires that her students buy the rings that go on the notebook paper to prevent this, but I cannot count on my students "caring" enough to go to the trouble.  She also gives them an option for using a plastic sleeve for each page, but again, this is expensive.  So, for the past two years I've used spiral notebooks.  I cut everything to fit a regular spiral.  I learned 3/4 of the way through the first year that if you duct tape the spiral, the notebook covers will last an entire year.  Also, the first year I required that all of my students decorate the covers of their notebooks.  Only 1 student all year misplaced their notebook.  This past year I did not require them to decorate the notebooks, and it became much more of a a problem to keep up with them and to only use them for social studies class.

 

As for grading;  I grade them each time I give a test.  I use Brian's way of grading in that I am not grading every page - I grade 5-6 pages carefully and concentrate on the pages they are responsible for.  It doesn't take long to learn what you are looking for and if a student has produced that.

 

I have also used Dinah Zikes' "Notebook Foldables" book.  This provides a lot of templates for graphic organizers that students can use in their notebooks.  

 

Hope this helps some.  I love the notebooks and can't imagine doing something different in my class now.  The students do have a love/hate relationship with them, but they do have a relationship and that's half the battle I find.

 

Malissa