The Start of My Journey

I am beginning my journey with Interactive Science Notebooks in my classroom.  I am very excited to use these and my kids have jumped on board too!   Since this will be a learning adventure, I figured I would share what I do, things that work, things that don’t work, and great resources I find.  I will be hosting a blog series—Time to Interact.  This series will include any resources I create to use as freebies for my wonderful readers.

My first piece of advice is to try everything you plan! 

Make your own version of the notebook. 

This will better prepare you to explain and share with your students.  It will also allow you to see any flaws ahead of time. 

To introduce the notebooks to my students I created a little presentation to show pictures and the purpose.

At the end of the presentation I included this page:

I included this to help give students for their cover page if they picked the option where they decorate the cover.  Here are the cover options:

When I created these for my kids I didn’t put a space for their name… Oops!

I fixed it for all of you.  My students glued this safety contract in the front cover of their notebooks.  I recommend cutting or trimming extra edges off for your kids if you have a limited Science time. 

I also hot glued laminated sheets on the back of the notebooks for easily accessible dry erase boards.  I think this will be a HUGE time saver during lessons. 

This is what my notebook looks like for the first day!

My students started today by brainstorming and responding to the question:

How are humans and animals similar?

After responding my class was pulled into an assembly, but on Monday we will pick back up where we left off. 

Have you ever been on the website Teacher Domain? 

Well if you haven’t check it out here:

http://www.teachersdomain.org/

It is free to register and there is a ton of video clips and lesson ideas available.

We are going to watch and discuss two videos: Beavers & What Animals Eat.

Then we will work on the foldable together.  Students will write each thing an animal needs to live on the front with an illustration.  Inside we will write why each thing is needed by animals.  At the end of the lesson, students will illustrate an animal they chose in their habitat with their needs being met.  As a class we will write what we learned.  (Eventually students will do this independently.)  I will be sure to share student work sample photos next week!

Click below to download the free resources!