Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

We got one of "those" emails at school yesterday....the one that tells us we can't have a Halloween party. No problem....we've been getting those for years. Most teachers plan a party but don't make any reference to Halloween thus being able to say, "We aren't having a Halloween party." (I love that teachers can find the loop holes in just about anything! We are like miniature lawyers in the classroom when wording is vague :) In our school district we are about to go on a week fall break and it is the end of the quarter so our parties are called an "End of Quarter" party (and we have four of them a year). Other teachers are calling their "party" a Fun Friday. This email was a little different and seemed to indicate that ALL parties were not allowed. Whoa!!!!!! That caused a little stir in our world (mostly because notices have gone out to parents, children are excited about it, etc.). The emails started flying back and forth.

A friend of mine showed me this pop up site that I thought was pretty cool. It could easily be incorporated into a notebook...particularly the animal ones in conjunction with learning about the animal in science There are some boat ones that I thought might be fun if you studied explorers in Social Studies. I am not sure how hard they are to make but I thought I would give it a try and see if I think fourth graders (and myself) are up for the challenge :)

I saw this in a classroom and really liked the set up. She had a parent volunteer make it for her after explaining what she needed. The volunteer had taken a cut down sheet of poster board and laminated it. She used double sided tape and plastic sheet protectors. The orange one was for one subject area and the purple is for another that she teaches. She simply slides in the standards, objective, and essential question in the plastic sheet protectors. Those are mostly on display for the folks coming in to observe. She does a more "child friendly" version of these on her flipcharts at the beginning of her lessons.

I had made the larger one in the last picture at a science professional development program at Roper Mountain Science Center in Greenville , SC. One of the teachers in the class said that she made them on a smaller scale with empty soda/water bottles so I thought I would give it a shot. Teacher Tips: - Have students bring in the bottles. Collect until you have enough. Kids love doing contributing to a project and mine always asked if we had enough yet. - I took all of the bottles home in a large trash bag and precut all the tops while watching tv (and made the drainage holes). I kept the top and base together by using small cut pieces of packaging tape so that students had a matching top and bottom (they would just take off the tape when we started the project). - I modeled what I did at home in front of the students in case they wanted to make one on their own at home. - Make extras of EVERYTHING (bottles and cut pieces of duct tape). - Pour aquarium gravel into a shoe box and have