Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

A couple of days before Spring Break I gave students a quiz focusing on the characteristics of cold blooded and warm blooded vertebrates. I wanted them to match up characteristics so I made a cut and paste assessment. Students had to cut out different types of characteristics on one sheet and glue them under the right heading on another. At the bottom of each heading I had them draw (and label) a picture of an animal in that category. This turned out to be a good thing because several students drew pictures of reptiles under amphibian and vice versa (I took points off if they didn't put a label only because it is very hard to tell what some students drawings are). While students were doing that behind their privacy shields, I called students to my desk and had them sit and explain the difference between a cold blooded and warm blooded animal. I don't do these verbal assessments very often but I wanted to see if the majority of the class understood the difference and could put i...

This is a copy of a comment I left on Mrs. Gannon's Social Studies blog about review games. When I was in grad school one of the ideas for math was to take a black and white soccer ball and number it 1-12 on the blank white hexagons (pentagons?). Then students tossed it back and forth to each other and had to multiple, divide, add or subtract (depending on the skill level of the students) whatever two numbers their left and right hand thumb was on. I got the ball from Walmart (the only place that seemed to have the old “black and white” soccer balls) and did this with my math class when I was student interning. I moved into science and still had the ball so I decided to come up with 24 “must know” science questions for each unit and play the ball toss game that way. I would list 12 questions for the right hand thumb and then 12 questions for the left hand thumb. At the begining of class, for a warm up, I would have students stand and I would toss it to the first student, they woul...

Another grading technique I use for the notebooks is assigning a "catch up" day (usually a Friday and in conjunction with a quiz). As students are finished their quiz they get their notebook and work on completing the required pages. Then they come to me to get their notebook checked. I have a spread sheet and I mark off that we met and what grade they received. I can do a lot of grading quickly that way. I am usually left with a handful that I still have to get after class to grade but it is less cumbersome. This is a great way to get the coloring done, which is the one thing that tends to get pushed to the side if we are running out of time. If you periodically grade this way it is important to have something for students to do when they are finished. For forth grade that is easy....you can have them make a poster of some topic you have been studying to put up in the classroom, you can let them check out the nonfiction section of your bookshelf and read up on any topic they...

I often create my own crossword puzzles and word searches for my science class. These can be assigned for homework but more often I use them as extra work students can do when they are done a test or quiz. If you type in "make your own word search" lots of different websites come up. I usually use the Discover Education site to make mine. Three years ago I made test shields out of two taped together file folders (they have held up pretty well). Inside the folder I put the test/quiz and a puzzle. This keeps earlier finishers quiet and engaged while others finish up.

There had been a request to post the check system that I use. This is one I received from a fifth grade teacher at our school that has been working well. I'll try and convert to a pdf so I can post for download.

Someone had a question about using the notebooks to study for tests. Good question! As mentioned in a much earlier post, I generally do not let the notebooks leave the classroom. I worked with a group of students my first year who did not take care of their supplies and often things that went home never came back. This was extremely frustrating so I stopped sending the notebooks home. Instead I adopted the study guide above from a co-teacher (thanks Ms. Gannon!). The children, parents, and I love it. Basically you create a two table grid in a word document (see first picture). You put a question on one side and the answer on the other. You can leave the answer part blank and students can fill that in during class. I only had about 45 minutes with my students last year and for the sake of time I would only leave a few blank that they would either fill out as we reviewed the study guide or I would give them a set amount of time to fill in the blanks using their notebook and then reviewe...

I know a lot of folks ask about grading and I have confessed a love/hate relationship with it but I am happy to report that Mrs. Gannon has just addressed how she grades in her social studies blog . This might be of more use then my post, as she has been notebooking for years with her middle schoolers and was my "go to" person my first year of notebooking. She is moving down to teach fifth grade (social studies) in our new intermediate school so I am excited to see her post her adventures notebooking with upper elementary. Her blog is also on the right of this screen under "blogs I am following." Hope everyone is enjoying the summer. I recently attended Space Camp for Teachers on a scholarship from Honeywell (applications are due early December and are for math and/or science teachers who teach children ages 10-16...even though it says middle school teachers on their webpage it does not indicated that on the application). It was a great experience and I posted a vid...

I was asked to explain my grading system for my notebooks and I hate to say that I have not really perfected that one yet. When I was teaching sixth grade to over 80 students last year the grading was OVERWHELMING. I would stay late on Friday (seriously I couldn't have found a better day?) to grade students work for the week. It would turn into a grading party with some of the the other teachers in my POD doing the same thing. My team leader seemed to have a much better way of handling grading. I've asked her to explain it in her blog (link to the right under blogs I am following - Social Studies). Here is what I do now. Normally the notebooks are weighted at about 30% of the students grade (here is my plug for a free online grading book that I love. You can access it from home, run off reports, and give parents access to it). I walk around the classroom during the independent part of the lesson and give students grades on a clipboard spread sheet I have going. Now I only hav...

Fairly routinely I do a weekly "If you were paying attention in class" quiz. It is generally a multiple choice/short answer format anywhere from 10-15 questions. I started to have students glue in their quizzes to their notebook and I like the idea. I don't do it with tests, since they tend to be longer. Here are some things though to consider: - I am trying to keep the science notebooks to one book this year and not bleed over to a second notebook. This means that space is at a premium. I stopped gluing quizzes in around December. I am also trying to conduct my weekly quiz through my websites quiz feature - it gets graded for you and uses less paper (website I use to create my own website is School World at www.myteacherpages.com ). - It is nearly impossible to make a 10 question quiz that will fit on one side of the book unless you use a publisher catalog format (see previous posts). Most of my weekly quizzes have been running about 15 questions and take up a two page ...