Switching to a science interactive notebooks was one of the biggest game changers early in my teaching career. When began teaching high school biology at the end of the 20th century (I finished my student teaching in the Spring of 1999) most classes were using 3-ring binders to organize classwork and assignments. At this time my mentor teachers were still using overhead projectors and some were even showing films in 8mm reel to reels. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Google it. I was looking for best practices that would help get my students both interested about science while still keeping the rigor of the subject.
I wanted to have a way for my students to not only keep all of the work we completed organized, but I was looking for a way to help students feel less intimidated by taking biology. Many students came into my class feeling that science was difficult. Both using my fill-in-the-bank lecture notes (formally known as cloze notes) and science interactive notebooks helped me bridge the gap for my students and helped them succeed in my classes. Regardless if you are a veteran teacher looking to make improvements on your method of collecting student work, or a new teacher figuring out what will work best for your teaching style, I believe that interactive notebooks are the way to go!
Build Your Science Interactive Notebook Table Of Contents
When designing a science interactive notebooks you want to begin with the end in mind. And this means mapping out each unit in advance. You need to decide how much time you want to set aside for each unit and which assignments you want to include during the unit. Once you have set aside the number of days for your unit and decide which assignments you want students to complete, you can begin to build your table of contents.
Real talk. It took me a few years of creating and refining my science interactive notebooks before I was happy with how they were organized. So give yourself grace. I would try to plan out 2 units at a time so I was always a few weeks ahead of my students with my interactive notebooks. If this is your first year teaching, you may be learning the curriculum and picking assignments a few days before presenting them to your kids. My first year I had students paste a few blank table of contents pages in their notebooks and we filled them in as they went along. But a few a year or so I knew what I wanted to put on each page. It just takes a little advance planning.
Plan Out Your Right Side Interactive Notebook Pages
On the right side pages of your science interactive notebooks will generally be reserved for students to input their material teacher directed instruction. For the most part this is going to be lecture notes. You definitely have a couple options here. You can have the students use Cornell notes and write directly on the notebook pages. You can use doodle note worksheets if those fit with your direct instruction. Or, as I mentioned above, you can use a fill-in-the-blank note taking page. With my PowerPoints and Guided notes, I have created INB pages that have 6 slides per page. At the start of a unit students can paste these pages directly in the notebooks as directed by your table of contents.
Personally I like the doodle note or fill in the blank options for a few reasons. First, you can plan ahead for how many pages you will need in your interactive notebook. Second, These types of notes are much easier to differentiate for students. In my classes I have created multiple versions with differing amounts of prewritten information for my students. Students know which versions they are to use and this way individual students are getting the support they need while still working at the same pace in my classroom.
Plan Out Your Left Side Interactive Notebook Pages
The left side pages in your interactive notebook will be where student created work will go. As a teacher you have a lot of latitude in which kinds of left side work you want your students to include in the INB’s. Vocabulary worksheets, concept maps, and graphic organizers like mind maps are some of my favorites. This is also where doodle notes fit in for my notebooks. I prefer to use doodle notes as a review tool instead of for direct instruction to help solidify concepts as I am checking for understanding before we get to a unit test.
My recommendation is to start with the worksheets and activities that you know and love. Figure out where they fit best and then begin to look for new assignments based on how much time you have left for your unit. This also may be decided by the level of class you are teaching. I have used interactive notebooks in both freshman biology as well as AP biology (which was mainly a junior/senior class). While the difficulty of the assignments varied, the organizational structure of my science interactive notebooks remained consistent.
Final Thoughts….
If you are still on the fence about incorporating interactive notebooks in science classes, hopefully I’ve given you the confidence to get started with them. Not only do they become an awesome semester review tool (since all student work is in one place), but they give structure to students who need help staying organized in middle and high school.
