Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

In one of my last posts I said that I was going to try and recycle paper when putting together the notebook pages I give to my students. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner! I have teachers recycle paper all the time in the copier room so we can use them for rough drafts or math scratch paper but it never occurred to me to use them to run off my copies (the other side is firmly glued to the book so students will never see the other side). Here is my first attempt in pictures. The top picture shows the master copy and the scratch paper I was going to use (I think this teacher ran off too many of one sheet). NOTE - In another attempt to save paper I try my hardest to keep all my information on one side of the paper and then I copy the same text to the other side so I get two for one (instead of running off 44 sheets I now only have to run off 22 sheets). This means that I sometimes make my text pretty small. In the sheet above I used 8 font. I try not to go lower then...

As my fourth grade students are finishing up an animal project I have them working on, I am asking them to come to this site and post their response to the following notebooking questions. Tell me how you feel about using the science notebook in class? What are your favorite and least favorite parts of our science notebook? Would you recommend that other teachers use them in the classroom? Why or why not?

I was thrilled when the South Carolina Teacher of the Year mentioned the student notebooks I had on display at the USCB instructional Share Fair on January 24th in her ongoing blog at http://www.cerra.org/teacherLeaders/jenna/index.html . It was a nice moment that I shared with my students. The children were thrilled that their notebooks got a lot of attention and a shout out on Ms. Hallman's blog.

I was at a conference once and they told us about using clock partners to team up students in the class. The concept is that students walk around and set an appointment time with other students and record their appointment on their clock (example: I go to you and ask if you have a five o'clock open. You tell me yes and I write your name in for 5 p.m. and you write my name in your 5 p.m. slot). You can specify that you can only list a persons name once or you must have equal number of boys and girls to keep it fair. I found a template on the internet and recreated it on my own (feel free to email me if you want me to send it to you). I had my students get their clock partners at the beginning of the year and they glued it to the back inside cover of their science notebook. If I need to group students I just say, "Get with your two o'clock partner" and they know what to do. I don't use them as often as I should. I've been trying to correct this recently. The ot...

I read somewhere to shrink handouts to fit the notebook you need to set your copier to reduce and hit 85%. I had never actually put this to the test. I did the other day and the picture above was the result. I still had to trim and I am actually thinking that 80% would probably have been better. Then I could have cut the sheets above in half and put them together on the copier to run a full sheet of paper with a copy of the worksheet on both halves (thus saving paper). Also....and this just occured to me typing this...since one side is always glued to the notebook you could recyle paper pretty easily. I always request scrap paper in the copier room and I could easily run the blank side through the copier and glue the unwanted side down in the notebook. Mmmm....might have to try that this week.

For any South Carolinians ....the University of South Carolina, Beaufort campus ( USCB ) is holding a local teacher share fair this weekend (January 24, 2009) in the Hargray Building from 9:30 - 11:00 a.m. I will be presenting my notebooks and several other teachers from around the county will be presenting ideas from their classroom. Anyone in the area is welcome to attend. This is the first of its kind and I think it will be a learning experience for the University and the teachers attending. I am hoping that there is a good response and the University considers more of these share fairs in the future.

This was my version of a flow chart of sorts using the process of photosynthesis. Students had to create, in picture and words, an eight panel flow chart that detailed the process of photosynthesis. As a group we broke down all the steps into eight possible panels and students were required to write the steps we had come up with and draw a picture to show what was happening in each step. I have not used this in my elementary class yet but most likely will when we get to our electricity unit (a flow chart explaining how electricity is made and gets to your home).