Skip to main content

End of Year Blues

We are near the end of the school year and today I had to give back my student's science notebook. I had a few that said I could keep theirs but, as you can guess, the really good notebooks were claimed proudly by their owners. This is a far cry from the sixth graders I taught last year that let me all keep their books. I'm glad I got to keep a few because I was not that faithful with keeping up with my teacher version.

Overwhelmingly students loved the solar system accordion book with velcro assignment the best (although as stated in an earlier post they play with it constantly). I had a child bring in his visiting aunt and uncle and that was the page he showed off to them.

Next year I would like to:

- Incorporate a popup or two in the book
- Do a full page picture that has flaps students have to write under (I'm thinking water cycle)
- Have some kind of menu activities for students to work at the end of a unit.
- Create BINGO for each unit (the kids loved playing it)
- Give students more independent work and less guided work
- Incorporate a few writing assignments (journaling to a question, etc.)
- Decoupage the front cover at the end of the year (saw it once and liked it but need to try it first)

I'm sure there are more things but those are things that made the top of my list to be thinking about this summer.

I am hoping to get more organized this summer and maybe even get a completed teacher book together. A friend suggested that I do my teacher edition in a three ring binder with page protectors so that I can add and remove things more easily then in a composition book. So if I skip or change a notebook activity last minute I can make the necessary changes in my teacher edition without throwing the book off. I liked the suggestion.

For those following this blog...I will be back at the same school next year (Mossy Oaks Elementary School) teaching fourth grade again. I will be on a team of three teachers this coming year teaching science to all three classes. I will have one homeroom ELA class (first time teaching ELA so I am a little nervous but will be on the lookout how I can incorporate notebooking there as well...probably not the first year but who knows.)

I'll continue to post during the summer as I come across ideas.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I happened across your site through a google search. I love it! I am working to implement science and math notebooks in my classroom. I used them this past year for the first time and have gotten great tips from reading your postings. Any resources you can pass along or great ideas or activities you use would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and I look forward to reading more!
June 9, 2009 at 7:12 PM
Anonymous said…
I happened across your site by accident, but am glad I did. I started science and math notebooks in my classes this past year. I have learned a lot just by reading your previous postings. Any ideas, activities, or resources you have to pass along would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
June 9, 2009 at 7:15 PM
Jane Hake said…
I reccommended your blog at a staff development on science notebooking and that gave you a few followers from our school! Happy Summer to you!
June 11, 2009 at 10:29 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.
13 comments
Read more

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&
5 comments
Read more

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more
Post a Comment
Read more