I absolutely love the idea of interactive notebooks in my chemistry classes. But they are SO intricate and have so many moving pieces. People who love interactive notebooks take them so seriously, to the point that I never wanted to use them. It’s super easy to become overwhelmed about interactive notebooks.
When I was trying to find my groove in how I like to teach my high school chemistry students I did a lot of research on interactive notebooks. (Plus administration was on me about getting them started.) Essentially, the kids take notes (or glue in teacher made notes) on the right side of the page of a notebook. On the left page, students work with the material and summarize concepts. Immediately to me, that feels backwards, but okay.
The things that people make to glue into these notebooks are often chaos. Sorry, not sorry. All the foldables, moving pieces, brass fasteners…? I can’t deal.
But I love the idea of interactive notebooks. I love building a textbook, custom designed to what my students need. I love that they can write and annotate, much like they would do in college classes with purchased textbooks. Because I was feeling really torn and overwhelmed about interactive notebooks, I decided to fake them.
Working From Left to Right (There’s no rules)
Instead of working from right to left, my kids work left to right. That just seems logical to me. On the left page, students will glue down a guided notes page that I custom make for my classes. They include charts and diagrams. There’s also an example or two for me to work out with them.
On the right page students will get what I call a Q-Card. It’s a short series of questions they glue into their notebooks and answer directly on the lines below. I like to use it for self assessment and practice. The kids often work alone or in pairs to answer these questions. I have the kids write the answers on my whiteboard and teach their classmates. This gives them a chance to make sure they understood the lesson and have a few more examples written out in their notebooks. Then I’ll give them a (sometimes graded) classwork assignment that I allow them to work on with their classmates.
I’m not strict about the Table of Contents and Page Numbers
I literally don’t care about the students’ notebooks. I feel like, and maybe I’m wrong… but most INB teachers spend too much time on page numbers. Truly, I don’t care if the metric system notes fall on page 10 or 11. Even the left/right thing. As far as I’m concerned, it’s okay if the Q-card is the page behind the notes. Pages are designed to be flipped. When people come off as uptight about their INB pages, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed about interactive notebooks and quit before you’ve started.
I number the pages of my notebook, and recommend students do the same. But we give each of our lessons a numerical code. For instance, metric system is 1.4. So if we need to go back to that page for whatever reason, the kids know where to look. It accounts for discrepancies in their page numbers for kids who skip, or write big. I can super easily redirect students back to old lessons too!
I SOMETIMES do the “crazy” INB stuff
Just because I’m faking an interactive notebook doesn’t mean that the whole notebook needs to be boring. When I find that a flip book or moveable pieces is the BEST way to teach or learn a concept, I’ll do it! I’m not opposed to all the moving parts. I just need them to make sense. There can be so much overwhelm about interactive notebooks and their parts, so I simply don’t use them all the time. I only use them when it is academically necessary. And the plus side to that, is that the students aren’t getting this “fun” thing every day, and it tends to keep its novelty.
At this point a fair number of my “interactive notebook” pages are available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Check them out! The full chemistry curriculum will be available soon. In the mean time, make sure to grade my chemistry curriculum outline where I give essentially a calendar of what I teach each day!
Use What You Already Have
If you have a bunch of teaching materials but they’re full sized pages and won’t fit into a notebook, YOU CAN STILL USE THEM! There are three options for getting your full sized pages to fit in a notebook without too much work on your part. First option is to bring TWO copies said worksheet to the copy machine. Put both in the document feeder and set the machine to print “2 pages per sheet.” This will print page one and two side by side, and you can chop in half at the guillotine trimmer. Boom! Full sized stuff instantly fits!
The second option is to print your stuff a bit smaller. Instead of printing the full scaled image, print it directly from your computer at the “80” setting. Once it’s printed, you’ll have to trim a bit off of each dimension of the paper using the guillotine trimmer. This will actually print the pages a bit larger than the “2 pages per sheet option.” So test it out and see what works best for you.
Last option is to do a combination of the first two. You can bring a single sheet to the copy machine and reduce your printing ratio. This will vary a bit depending on the copy machine. Most recently, my copy machine would print properly at 63% the normal size. I’d start at 65% and work up or down depending on your needs. Just make sure to bring a notebook and a pair of scissors to the copy machine to test it out. THEN WRITE YOUR PRINT SETTINGS IN YOUR NOTEBOOK. It’s super frustrating to think it’s 80%, print an entire class set and realize it doesn’t fit… Not like that’s ever happened to me before…
