Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Last week I wrote about an "If I Ran the Zoo" project . It was a project that I collaborated with an elementary art teacher to complete.  Our big takeaway during our debriefing was the fact that the iPad app was too complicated for our second grade group and we wished we had something web based that would work for our upper elementary students. Imagine my surprise the very same week to come across Canvas , a web based drawing app that allows user to either draw freehand or upload a picture to trace around. The website seemed to indicate it was for Chromebook users but I tested it on a student HP device and it worked just fine. I created a video overview , which I have embedded above if you are interested in checking it out.  The art teacher and I were thrilled with the possibility of extending similar projects to our upper elementary students. I can't wait to see what ideas she comes up with!

One of my favorite sites is  www.ducksters.com  for social studies and science articles for kids but it also has a section for biographies separated into categories.  One of the categories is African Americans which links to biographies of notable African Americans through history.  If you are having students conduct research for Black History Month you may want to consider this site.

I saw this site being used in a class the other day and I wanted to see if there were other videos/songs that could be used. I saw a nice free Energy Song  that would be perfect for our 6th grade teachers who teach a lot of these concepts and I liked their game show Even/Odd video and Capitalization enough to send the link to our first and third grade teachers. The site is subscription based with a 14 day free trial. I wish you could test and buy individual songs as opposed to having a monthly subscription or buying an entire CD (when you only want one song). Most of the songs seem more middle/high school orientated. I wouldn't get a subscription if I was in the classroom (but I would certainly use the free songs if they applied!).

I had a second grade teacher ask me to help find a computer lab activity for her kids related to the states of matter. I came up with a lesson using Brain Pop Junior (free for South Carolina teachers through Discus) but I also found this Study Jams site through Scholastic . I watched the Solids, Liquids, and Gas one and that was pretty good. I really liked the song that went with it (although I wasn't a huge fan with how long it took to load). They also have a Water Cycle video as well (which sadly doesn't have a song :) I wish they had more videos but they only have two math ones (fractions and determine the missing operation).

A teacher friend of mine passed on this site and I love it! There are lots of linked interactive sites in various subject areas that can be used by students at home, in the classroom, or in the computer lab. I use to like taking my students to the computer lab a couple of times during a unit to engage in science reviews via games and websites I had found. The children enjoyed the break and so did I :) Many of the students would play the games at home as well. I explored the science section and it has a lot of great student friendly sites. To visit the site click HERE.

I love love love the site Pinterest. For those of you have not heard of it it is a site that acts as a virtual pin board of things you come across the web and want to save. What is the best part is that you can follow other pinners. I don't have time to look at everything I want to on the web but I can look at other peoples pin boards and repin things of interest to my site. I have picked up so many great ideas for lessons from other people's sites that it is definitely my favorite new website of 2011. My site is a bit of a mishmash right now. I need to start sub-categorizing items within my "school" pinboard because right now I have 245 pins in that category (don't get me started on my craft and recipe boards!). If you haven't heard of it I highly recommend checking it out and start searching the education and school boards for ideas :)

I had lost and found this site several times over the years and have decided to blog about it so I don't loose it again! This site belongs to a middle school social studies teacher name Mr. Roughton. Under his assignment tab he has lots of great ideas that can be incorporated into a right hand assignment for notebooks. Often times he has PDF's you can download or details regarding the assignment. I like to look at it from time to time to see if I can get any new notebooking ideas. I was on it today and was really looking at his game board template and I want to see if I can have students make a game board that will fit into the notebook (oooohhhh....I love a good project to try out).

We are currently reviewing for our state end of year testing (PASS test) in science. I put together several online review games, i.e. Jeopardy and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, for students. These are linked on my website so students can play at home as well as in school. Students like the Jeopardy games and I prefer the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game because you get four choices and you have to find the right answer (which is how our PASS test is set up). Next week is our last week of review and I booked the computer lab for each of my classes. Students will be able to bring in their science notebook to the computer lab to help them out. My higher kids don't use the notebooks but some of my struggling students will use it as a reference. The three sites I used to make games were: www.superteachertools.com www.classtools.net (I used primarily for vocabulary games) www.jeopardylab.com Many of these games can be played whole class. When I play in class each table group is a ...

We had a short week (four days) to accommodate parent/teacher conferences. This also coincided with the start of our Fall break here. Students and teachers are off for a week. Our district has Extended Learning Time for students who have been identified as needing remediation and they will have school next week (small groups focusing on reading and math). Since I had a short week (that also combined an "end of quarter" party Thursday) I choose not to start any new material in the notebooks. We will be starting Astronomy when we get back. I designated this week "tech week" and had the great idea of teaching my fourth graders Photostory. Sadly if it could go wrong it did. Photostory had been removed from the computer lab computers and our laptop lab during summer re-imaging and I failed to check it assuming it would have still been on the computers from last year. Lesson learned! The original plan was for students to choose one of the following and create a Photostor...

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.

As I am writing this, it is Saturday...two days before teachers go back to school. Most teachers know that the week that we go back to school our days are heavily scheduled with school meetings, team meetings, district meetings, technology meetings, curriculum meetings, meet-and-greets, etc. so the actual time spent in the classroom is very limited. I find it helpful to have some notebooking things done before that Monday. In my case I have moved classrooms this year so I really tried to be as organized as possible with the notebooks so I had one less thing to think about as I unpack and put away. My checklist consists of: ___ Purchased composition books (students will replace stock when they bring in supplies) ___ Put name labels on each book ___ Developed a storage system for books (in my case purchasing bins) ___ Reinforced binding with clear masking tape (done in front of the TV one evening) ___ Glued in starter pages (will also do in front of TV this weekend) I plan to start not...

Here is a link that I got from Marcia Krech who posted in response on My Science Lessons Blog (link to the right "my blog list"). It is a lab safety "What Not To Do" activity that I thought would be easy to add to the notebook, with the picture on the left hand side and the match up sheet (found at the linked site) that students have to fill out on the right hand side. Thank you Marcia!

This wheel was posted by a 5th grade science teacher in NJ on her science blog (also linked to the right titled My Science Lessons). If you look at the green outer circle there are ideas for right hand assignments based on the various bloom's levels of taxonomy. She has a lot of great notebooking ideas and pictures. I loved her PowerPoint mystery footprint lesson for observations and inference, which is downloadable.

This idea came from a webstite that was passed on by my old team teacher (and avoid notebooker). The website is http://www.mrcoley.com/flowcharts_examples.htm . It is a flow chart of the Pilgrams arrival at Plymouth. We both thought it could be modified and used in a notebook. I can see more applicability in social studies then science but I can certainly see how I could use this to have students do a flow chart of the process of photosynthesis or how a generator works. Please check out Mr. Coley's site as he has a lot of great teacher resources listed.

Here are some online resources for notebooking: http://interactive-notebooks.wikispaces.com/ http://www.teacherweb.com/SC/LadysIslandMiddleSchool/Gannon/ap6.stm http://upstagereview.org/ClassroomArticles/interactive%20notebook.pdf http://www.pasoschools.org/prhs/pasohigh/classes/Fairbank/public.www/AVID/Avidintro.htm http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/649749:Topic:150530?x=1&id=649749%3ATopic%3A150530&page=1#comments http://www.nonags.org/members/dasaunders/index2.html http://inthelou.teachfor.us/2008/10/19/science-notebooks-notebooking-changed-my-life/#comment-310266 Online foldable resources (great for ideas on things you can add to the notebook) http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking https://foldables.wikispaces.com/

I use a lot of Dinah Zike foldables in my science notebooks (pictures coming soon). I highly recommend purchasing her books. I used the elementary science book above and used it a lot in the elementary school and middle school (I have the middle/high school science book as well...which is currently on loan to my son's high school biology teacher). My social studies teacher uses Dinah's social studies books as well. My favorite books are: Dinah Zike's Big Book of Books Dinah Zike's Book of Classroom Organization Dinah Zike's Big Book of Elementary Science Dinah Zike's Big Book of Middle and High School Science All the books can be purchased online at http://www.dinah.com/ She recently developed a notebooking book (which of course I purchased). I got a lot of great ideas from that book as well. I am anxiously awaiting the publication of her vocabulary book for 3rd grade and up.