You would think that page numbering would be pretty easy (that was what I thought at least). I messed that up my first year and learned from my mistake!
How did I mess up something as simple as page numbering?!?! Easy...I had my middle schoolers number ALL the pages at the start of the year (basically 50 pages a day....most composition books are 200 pages). Well...if they messed up at page 20 forget it they were messed up for the rest of the year. It doesn't matter how much you model it or how slowly you work through the numbering SOMEONE is going to mess up (sigh!).
The pages start at the very first page (1) and then at the top of each page, which (if done correctly) would work out to be even numbers on the left and odd numbers on the right. This helps some students self check but most students are moving at warp speed once they get the hang of it and rarely self check!
What worked better for me this year was to have the students number up to page 25 and we did it togther...with me saying (repeatedly), "Make sure you haven't skipped pages" or "Make sure even numbers are on the left and odd numbers are on the right." If a student makes a mistake it is not too difficult to erase and redo when we are only talking about 25 pages.
We didn't do the next 25 until we were close to finishing adding content to the first 25 pages. Then I would do a repeat of above (walking students through all the steps of numbering). If a student really messed up their numbering they could start fresh in the second round of numbering.
How did I mess up something as simple as page numbering?!?! Easy...I had my middle schoolers number ALL the pages at the start of the year (basically 50 pages a day....most composition books are 200 pages). Well...if they messed up at page 20 forget it they were messed up for the rest of the year. It doesn't matter how much you model it or how slowly you work through the numbering SOMEONE is going to mess up (sigh!).
The pages start at the very first page (1) and then at the top of each page, which (if done correctly) would work out to be even numbers on the left and odd numbers on the right. This helps some students self check but most students are moving at warp speed once they get the hang of it and rarely self check!
What worked better for me this year was to have the students number up to page 25 and we did it togther...with me saying (repeatedly), "Make sure you haven't skipped pages" or "Make sure even numbers are on the left and odd numbers are on the right." If a student makes a mistake it is not too difficult to erase and redo when we are only talking about 25 pages.
We didn't do the next 25 until we were close to finishing adding content to the first 25 pages. Then I would do a repeat of above (walking students through all the steps of numbering). If a student really messed up their numbering they could start fresh in the second round of numbering.
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