Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

This week we have been learning about cold blooded vertebrate groups. When I taught this in sixth grade I noticed that the groups form the word FAR (Fish, Amphibian, Reptile). I had my students make a 3 tab flip book and put the word F on one tab, A on the middle flap, and R on the last flap. They had to decorate their front cover so that they would remember that those animals were the cold blooded animals. To help students remember I tell them that they, "Live FAR FAR away that is why they are cold." This is just a way for them to associate FAR with cold (we certainly have all three animal groups here where we live). I taught a lesson each day for each group and had them write five facts and draw and color three pictures under each flap. I tell students that the A is in the middle because amphibians start their life out like the first flap (fish) and then change to resemble characteristics of the last flap (reptiles - live on land, breath with lungs). The last flap is R f...

We started learning about invertebrates. In all honesty I probably went into it a little deeper then I needed for the standards, but I was ahead of my long range plans and I taught sixth grade invertebrates, so I had resources, knowledge and time on my side. What I did was take two sheets of paper and folded them in half stapling it on the seam. This gave students six usable pages on the inside. I taught six mini lessons each day on each group of invertebrates. I discovered when teaching sixth graders that the groups they needed to know spelt out: C A MESS (Cnidarians, Arthropods, Mollusks , Echinoderms, Segmented Worms, Sponges). This is a great memory tool and I taught each group in order like that. Each lesson took about 1/2 an hour. Then I gave students a choice of if they wanted to work by themselves or with a partner to come up with a poem or song featuring some of the characteristics we had discussed during the lesson. I gave them scrap paper to work through it. They came up ...