Interactive notebooks
What is an interactive notebook?
Interactive Notebooks are tools we use to make connections between prior and new learning, revise our thinking, and deepen our understanding of the world around us. They show not only the content learned (the input) but also the reflective knowledge gained (the student's output). They provide a space where students can take what is inside their brains about the content, lay it out, make meaning from it, apply it, and share it with others.
Why do we use them?
We use Interactive Notebooks as a way to increase student thinking and achievement. They provide a means of communication, a way to track understanding, a way to assess, and a place for reflection. Interactive notebooks prepare students to compete globally by helping them develop the all-important higher thinking skills. They help students make connections between their thinking and personal experiences and science concepts and build deeper understandings of science subject matter. Interactive notebooks provide all students with the opportunity to create a concrete record of reflection, assessment, and connections to be viewed and discussed, with an academic language.
How do we make them?
The layout of an Interactive Notebook is fairly structured. All students will have the same input and output subjects on the same pages. (For example, "Page 6" should be the same for everyone!)
In your Interactive Notebook, odd numbered pages will be the right hand page, and numbered in the bottom right corner. These are the pages where you will find the "teacher input" page - notes, data collection, the teacher-guided work. Even numbered pages are on the left, and numbered in the bottom left corner. These are the output pages - where students take the knowledge gained during class time (from the right hand page) and use that knowledge in new situations or real-life applications. You can plot ongoing ideas and express your own thinking. Examples: homework questions, self-reflection, graphs, data tables, graphic organizers, etc. The left pages may sometimes be finished as homework.
Your Expectations page and Lab Safety Contract are the first pages in your notebook. Your Journal / Vocabulary section is second. The pages in this section are not numbered, but the Journal Questions themselves should be numbered, and questions written out, along with your answer. More than one Journal Question can go on a page. Weekly vocabulary lists should be on separate pages - one week's list per page.
You can check the Table of Contents page to see what goes in each section.
In your Interactive Notebook, odd numbered pages will be the right hand page, and numbered in the bottom right corner. These are the pages where you will find the "teacher input" page - notes, data collection, the teacher-guided work. Even numbered pages are on the left, and numbered in the bottom left corner. These are the output pages - where students take the knowledge gained during class time (from the right hand page) and use that knowledge in new situations or real-life applications. You can plot ongoing ideas and express your own thinking. Examples: homework questions, self-reflection, graphs, data tables, graphic organizers, etc. The left pages may sometimes be finished as homework.
Your Expectations page and Lab Safety Contract are the first pages in your notebook. Your Journal / Vocabulary section is second. The pages in this section are not numbered, but the Journal Questions themselves should be numbered, and questions written out, along with your answer. More than one Journal Question can go on a page. Weekly vocabulary lists should be on separate pages - one week's list per page.
You can check the Table of Contents page to see what goes in each section.