So I Want to Start Science Notebooks - Now What?

If you're reading this post, I'm hoping you also read my last one about our note-booking immersion day, which was a day of students exploring how they could use their notebooks through a constructivist approach. But, what do you do after that?

I like to think of these next several things as foundational experiences - they are kind of a big deal if you want things to keep progressing with your students' notebooks. Decisions will need to be made, either by you, by a collective staff, or with your students. Decisions like - what are our expectations for our grade level? Are there any tools (table of contents, index, glossary, etc.) that we are all going to agree to use? How much "freedom" do they have in terms of set-up or layout? Will the notebook be used only for this grade level, or will we pass them on to the next grade level? 

I admit that at the beginning I wanted a LOT of control (WHAT? Who me???) over what the kids' notebooks looked like, but I've come a long way in turning over the reins to them. You have to start with a level that is comfortable for you, so if that's giving them papers to tape in and letting them fill in what they need to - do it. If you're okay with letting it be completely free choice how they set it up - that's okay too. I'm about 3/4 of the way on the spectrum to free choice, but I do have some things I require to try to aid them in the process of using this as a tool (keep reading to find out what!). 

This approach is similar to "The First 20 Days" of Readers/Writers Workshop in that you're getting all the fundamentals out of the way. These are short mini-lessons (5-10 mins) - no need to over-teach since they'll be using these ideas right away, and for many days throughout the year. Create an anchor chart, or not - whatever works for you! While there isn't necessarily a right order for this - you want them to be "just-in-time" lessons. For example, you don't have to teach them how to tape a paper into their notebook until they have a paper to add into their notebook (yes, seriously, you need to teach them how to use tape...otherwise it's like they're trying to put a frame around the Mona Lisa...). 

So here's how it works for me, but naturally you'll need to tweak it to fit your needs! 

Foundational Experiences:

During Notebooking Immersion Day:

*What is a Science Notebook?

*Respecting Others’ Notebooks and Ideas

*Notebook Walks

*Technical Drawings (Drawing Scientifically)

*Always/Never Expectations

First Science Class Period: 

*Getting Notebooks (Who? From where? When?)

*Storing Notebooks

*Caring for Science Notebooks

*Sections of a Science Notebook

            *Table of Contents (optional for my kids)

            *Numbered Pages

            *Index

            *Further Investigations/Questions (optional for my kids)

*Adding in pre-made sheets (tape/glue)

In the First Several Days:

*QCE Format (Question, Claim, Evidence)

*Using highlighters

*T-charts

*Using notebook space efficiently (if needed)

*Using color

*Using bold, large, colored font to make things stand out

*Top-view vs. Side-view

It's so fun to see how they use their notebooks to organize the information inside their head. Here are a couple of snapshots from our first science activity. Students were classifying matter as either solid, liquid, or gas. Required pieces - date, heading, important word (classify), and showing their information some how. Check out how different brains have used their notebooks to show their thinking! 

I feel like we're up and running! I know they have many, many mini-lessons to come (I embed them with our science curriculum), but I'm pretty pleased with their first attempts! It is slow-going for sure at the beginning, but they'll get faster and better as we move forward! 

I'll include more mini-lesson ideas later on down the line so we can look at how ELA and math objectives can be supported through use of notebooks as well. :)  If I've left anything out, or you have a question feel free to ask! :)

Next blog topic??? How to manage all that science stuff! 

Not Your Mama's Note-booking Experience

Well, I did it! I survived the note-booking immersion days with the 3rd graders. Woohoo! I really do love introducing notebooks this way, but MAN am I tired! (Granted this is partially due to the 2 month old that still gets up once a night...)

Anyhow - one of the scariest parts of getting note-booking up and running in the classroom is figuring out how to get them up and running! Trying to figure out a way to get the kids to embrace their notebooks as a tool for them rather than copying what the teachers write in theirs is a real struggle. A few years back we decided to try to tackle this very problem by doing a whole-day note-booking immersion experience. Yup - our third graders spend one entire day (minus recess and lunch) note-booking and learning from each other. We brought back the idea of constructivism and let them struggle through it at the beginning, but it is SO worth it in the end. We tell them that the goal for the day is to figure out as many ways to use our notebooks as possible, and that they will need to be brave in trying and sharing new things today (part of our growth mindset). If they can figure out a way to use their notebook - we want them to try it! :)

So how do you plan one of these amazing days???

Here's the basics:

School Garden 

*Choose the location(s): We have done this off campus and on-campus, indoors and out. It really is dependent on what you have access to (buses, outdoor areas, etc.) and the weather. You want to plan for an area where kids will be engaged in their surroundings. This year we used our outdoor garden, butterfly garden, the park across the street, and our classroom. We put the outside areas early in our agenda while the temps. were still relatively cool, and saved the indoor things for the afternoon when temperatures would be warmer.

Heading Back from the Park

*Find some adult help: It is ideal to have 4-5 students in a group with an adult. This means asking (and sometimes begging) other adults to join in the fun. Since we have groups of about 20 we needed 4 adults to pull this off. Since the classroom teacher and I were both there already we needed 2 more. These could be parent volunteers, interns/aides, librarian, tech specialist, reading specialist, math specialist, PE teachers, principal, literally anyone you can find for the day. This year I was lucky enough to have my mom (a retired teacher with a passion for science) join us one day, our science-loving intern for two days, and our MO Conservation partner join us for all 3! All adults are expected to notebook right along with the kids so that they can model what their idea of note-booking is.

*Get/Make Notebooks: This is our "practice day" so we don't use our actual notebooks for our immersion experience. Usually I take the green route and cut out unused pages of old notebooks (kids that moved, old samples, etc) to use. I grab 5 sheets, fold them in half, staple down the middle, and make mini-notebooks for the day. I find these are less daunting since the pages are smaller. However, this year our MO Conservation partner brought us notebooks to use. Some pages were blank, some had half a page that was blank with the other half lined, and some had preset tables. This allowed kids to see some different opportunities right off the bat, which was good too. I'm not sure that one is better than the other so choose what works best for you. :) I would recommend NOT using your "regular" notebooks though while kids are trying things out. They like to start fresh in their "real" notebooks after they've gone through this day and have a better idea of what note-booking looks like.

*Plan for your groups: It is ideal to have groups of 4-5 students note-booking with an adult in the same area, but not necessarily "together". We encourage our kids to explore anything that peaks their interest, and notebook about it. We don't tell them what that means, but we do ask leading questions such as - "How could you show that in your notebook?", "What is the most interesting thing you notice?", "Is there another way that we could do that?" Basically our goal is for the class to come up with as many ways as possible to use our notebooks. (The list of what our kids came up with can be found later on the page...).

*Rotate groups throughout the day: Since everyone notebooks differently based on what they experience, how their brain organizes information, and how they are feeling that day it makes sense to rotate adults around the groups so that each group gets to experience each adult's method. They may see one who does amazing technical drawings, one that organizes information into tables, one that lists a lot of wonderings, etc.

*Plan your schedule: Schedule several small sessions throughout the day in different areas so kids have a new adventure awaiting them each place they go! Be sure to consider things like practice drills, assemblies, etc. that might be planned by the school!
       Here's our schedule:
     9:00 - Introduction, Schedule, Norms
     9:30 - Tornado Drill (School Plan)
     9:40 - Garden Experience
     10:25 - Notebook Gallery Walk/I-Noticed
     10:45 - Snack/Revision Opportunity
     10:55 - Park Experience
     11:40 - Partner Notebook Share/Add to I-Noticed List
     11:50 - What Makes a Good Notebook? (Look at past students' notebooks, famous scientists', etc.)
     12:15 - Recess/Lunch
     12:15 - Group Share
     1:05 - Technical Drawings (detailed drawings rather than sketches - think art meets science)
     1:50 - Fish Experience
     2:40 - Wrap-Up

*Share, Share, Share!: The most important part of the day is to find out how students used their notebooks - provide lots of opportunities for them to share throughout the day whether it's with a partner, with a small group, or as a whole class.

*Notebook Examples: Consider having some examples of notebooks available for the groups to explore after they've had some time to find some things out themselves. You can find a lot of ways to use a notebook in a few hours, but imagine how much time Ben Franklin, Leonardo DiVinci, and Benjamin Banneker spent writing in their notebooks. They can learn from the experts too! You might even be able to save a few notebooks over the years from students to use. (Our kids actually use their same notebook for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade so our samples come from students who moved in the summer if we didn't know to send their notebooks ahead of time.)

*Prepare to Find the Unexpected: Kids are amazing at finding everything you don't know and have never seen. This year we found squirrel bones under a tree in some sort of den, two Cooper's Hawks trapping a squirrel in a tree, and an amazing caterpillar (soon to be a swallowtail).

Squirrel Remains

Caterpillar on Brick Wall

Here's what some of the notebooks looked like from parts of the day. Keep in mind this is a work in progress - the important part is the variety of ways in which students recorded their experience. :)



Our "I Noticed" List - Not bad for a day's work!

• drawings
• labels
• lists
• sentences
• use of senses (smell, sound, sight, touch)
• tally marks
• math
• tables
• rubbings
• collected items taped in
• page sections
• date
• map/key
• questions
• measurements
• magnified pictures
• chart
• headings/titles
• page numbers
• index
• table of contents
• high-lighting
• bold/large font
• taped in papers
• color-coding
• tabs
• underlining
• calendar
• checklist
• Chinese writing (Yes, students can write in their native tongue)
• focus questions
• procedures
• comparisons
• reflections

Obviously the kids will not be experts after 1 day, BUT they do seem to feel pretty confident in what they can do in their notebooks to show their thinking. Over the next several class periods we'll go over the logistics of what's expected, where the notebooks are stored, taking care of the notebooks, etc. Check back in a few days to see where we go from here, and let me know if you need anything clarified! I tried to keep it short(ish), but keep in mind this is a full day's worth, and I can talk (type) for hours! :D

Happy Science!

What Do Scientists Look Like?

So I started this blog last year, and then did nothing with it...Whoops! I've been having this urge to start it back up again though, so here I go!

There's an activity out there where teachers ask their students to draw what a scientist looks like, and the results are overwhelming! Most students end up drawing an old, white man in a lab coat with beakers full of bubbling liquid. Seriously - google it! A quick google image search will show you exactly what I'm talking about. They don't draw women, they don't draw children, they don't draw scientists in the field, they don't have multiple races represented. The picture below (straight from a google image search) is the norm...


I haven't done this activity in a while, and I'm happy to say that last time I did there was a great variety of what the scientists were doing in the photo (typically connected to the student's favorite science area), and we had both genders represented, but we still lacked diversity. :(

Some of my students don't see themselves as scientists, and I can understand why. Many of the scientists that come up in our learning represent only a portion of our student population. Therefore, I decided to do a bulletin board highlighting a diverse group of scientists, and to make it extra cheesy - I put a mirror at the bottom. After all, the goal is to get them to see themselves as scientists! I'm a little ashamed to say that I had to do some research to find scientists that represented our school population. I feel like I should be able to rattle these out of my head far easier than I could! Looks like I still have some of my own learning to do!

While I know I don't have EVERY background represented, I'm hopeful that all of our kids can find someone with whom they can relate. I also put some of our neighborhood scientists in the mix (our partners for the St. Louis Box Turtle Project - more on this later), and a former student! (I'm sure I started teaching at 14 because there is no way I'm old enough to have former students doing this stuff!)



Anyhow - first learning of the school year, everyone who does science is a scientist, and since we all do science, we are all scientists.

The next couple of days I'll be working with our third graders on their science note-booking immersion days. What's that??? Well, come back and see!