Kickstart Learning with Interactive Notebooks
Let’s face it: helping your students to stay engaged in class can be difficult. Traditional note taking has often been a long, arduous process for both teachers and students to go through. It’s a monotonous, linear activity that allows for little engagement and even less creativity on the student’s end. With interactive student notebooks, or ISNs, however, all that starts to change. By enabling your students to process your course’s information in their own way while allowing a space for them to let their creativity flow, they’ll become more active learners and ultimately have a better overall class experience. Here’s what you need to know about these great study tools:
What’s an Interactive Student
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1) ISNs help students organize themselves.
One of the hardest parts of synthesizing new material for any student is trying to present it in a way that makes sense for referring back to them later. It’s easy to copy notes from the board verbatim; however, how much help do notes like these tend to be later on? Interactive notebook pages often divide new material into bite sized chunks which are easier for students to digest.
While an ISN is a personalized student textbook there will inevitably be a portion that’s distributed by the teacher - and that’s just fine! The important thing is that each assignment or piece of information you give your students is actively learned. Following this even with something as simple as your class rules can make students follow and understand them much better! For example, requiring students to highlight (or describe) the biggest 2 points from a particular handout in their own words keeps the ball in their court in terms of active learning. It also allows you to provide a framework for
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Open any ISN and you’ll likely find pages that have been manipulated to display recorded information in a new way. Pages may be cut, pasted, folded, colored on, etc. Flaps may hide certain sections to divide material into small chunks. Flip books may gradually lead students to developing a deeper understanding on certain material. By using more than just their writing skills, students are able to approach their learning objectives from multiple angles. Every ISN should also be full of student expression of information. Students should have space to write in their own words (or to draw/express in their own way) what each of those creative note pages they have completed is trying to teach them. This keeps them engaged and gives them the responsibility of making sure they understand
I can most likely see myself using the alphabet chart, the writing center, and some of the mini-lessons. Some of the specific mini-lessons that I liked are Idea Map, Where I’m From, and Riddles. Also, I enjoy the idea of playing music while the students are writing. At this moment I do not have any unanswered questions. Jennifer does a thorough job of leading the reader through strategies that will work in any classroom. Also, chapter 6, The Secret to independence: A Desire to write, provides the reader with a troubleshooting section. In this chapter she answers questions that were not thoroughly discussed in the main sections of the book. I think this chapter is helpful because it helped answer any questions that I had lingering in my mind. (Jacobson, 2010, p. 64, 122, 132).
A student seeking better retention of material taught in the class-room environment may employ the Cornell note-taking method. With such a method, the three sections of the note-taking outline can aid the student’s retention by improving encoding. For a student to be able to retain oncoming material, they first must be able to encode, as in interpret and internalize, oncoming material (Faber, Morris, & Lieberman, 2000). The note-taking section forces the student to use elaborative rehearsal which helps material reach long-term storage. The cue section uses recoding to deepen the material’s encoding. And the summary section makes the student reprocess what they’ve written down to prolong its retention. As these sections must be filled out separately, the student is expected to return to the notes at least three times in a twenty-four hour period. This immediacy in review may help the student retain the material to a greater extent. Thus, the process can serve as a vantage point for learning with Cornell note-taking as it encourages retention by improving encoding during the process of note-taking and guaranteeing review of the material in a first twenty four hours.
Another curriculum practice that I use with students I call “Silent Sustained Writing” (SSW). During SSW students are provided a writing prompt and then asked to write in an expository style about the question, situation, or discrepant event presented. The period of time for the writing is usually timed. The writing prompt may be very general or specific in nature. The students’ writings are scored with a writing
Consider this technique; announce to your class that your lecture notes or presentation will be available on Blackboard for the upcoming class. Let them know that the lecture notes will aid them in studying and preparing for quizzes, tests or examinations. Now look through your lecture notes and highlight key terms that you want your students to remember and key phrases or ideas that you want them to recognize and understand.
Intellectual quality is embedded through the elements of deep knowledge and understanding and substantive communication (NSW DET, 2003, p. 10). Throughout the lesson, focus is sustained on key concepts such as cursive writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. Students are then given opportunities both orally and written, to express and demonstrate their understanding and competency. Extension options are also available for students where they can use digital technologies to publish their work or write in calligraphy once the set task is completed. (NSW DET, 2003, p. 11). For students to achieve higher quality outcomes, they need to be highly engaged and willing to participate (NSW DET, 2003, p. 10). This can be achieved through establishing challenging learning goals within each students’ proximal development and providing work that is intellectually stimulating, relates to real life and meet the needs of each student in order to gain confidence first (AITSL, 2011; Berk, 2013, pp. 267-268).
Lesson plans are very well organized including visuals for the materials being illustrated. Academic vocabulary is addressed in many ways. For example, key concept and vocabulary words will be introduced to the students at start of lesson using building background. Students will be provided a hard copy of anticipation guide and words will be displayed on the Smart Board, too. Students will be provided with
We often, with input from the class, come up with actions to remember success criteria, and in particular to help them remember the key features for a certain type of writing such as a recount or character profile. By going through these at the beginning of each session it helps the children to remember what they need to include in their writing in order to achieve the learning
However, the novelty of the notebook wore off on some students, making it difficult for full engagement. Due to this, I feel the interactive notebooks did not fully impact every student as I had anticipated. During the first several lessons, students did enjoy the activities and being able to draw, color, and doodle on their side of the notebook. As time progressed, some of the students stopped doing their side of the interactive notebook. In the student survey, some students indicated that it took up the time they needed for other activities they needed to do. I believe part of this was also the lack of lessons that were taught with the interactive notebooks. I was only able to do one lesson per week, which seemed to be a hassle on the students. If the lessons were done on a daily basis, the students might have gotten used to them and applied themselves more. In the teacher interviews, the classroom teacher felt that if the notebooks were presented on a daily basis, there would have been more impact on the
I also discovered visual aids that help students organizing their thoughts. According to McEwan and Myers (2002), graphic organizers provides students a visual frame that aids them in sorting out notes and expanding their critical thinking skills. Therefore, to assist V. in note taking and mental organization I introduced him to Super Notes and myHomework, as well as the website ReadWriteThink. According to Download.com (n.d), SuperNotes is an app that allows students to create notes using their voices. Students can color code their notes to aid them in retrieving them quickly. They can also set alarm reminders to assist them in remembering when to complete assignments. MyHomework is another application that helps students track homework and various assignments (Microsoft,
I currently keep a small composition notebook of what I have titled “documentation”. This is filled with dates and information that seem significant. Such as this particular student came by for tutorials and wh...
student’s workbook. The parent will know the way the student should be taught, preventing long
With the rapid growth of technology in America’s society today, the use of computers in school classrooms has increased tremendously—an action that certainly has become beneficial to students, educators, and parents. The use of computers has positively skyrocketed over the past ten years. Not only are computers utilized daily in large companies across the world, but the everyday use in classrooms has also become prevalent. Using modern technology to assist school instructors with his or her daily lessons should definitely be regarded as a positive, acceptable method of instruction and not definitely does not prohibit students from understanding or critical thinking.
Do you ever think about how much technology has changed the way we work, learn, play, and even think? Technology is a major beneficiary to society; especially in the classroom where we get the opportunity to learn and grow. In recent years, schools have begun implementing tablets and other devices in the classroom to better student’s education. The use of technology in the classroom provides more of a personalized learning experience and gives students a widespread availability to engage in learning. Technology is necessary in today’s modern globe, it is basically “the pen and paper of our time and the lens through which we experience much of our world” (Warlick, 2013). Technology is not just considered the “internet”, it is so much greater than that. Overall, it enhances the quality of education and engages students deeper than ever before. With all the significant gains, why would people argue that technology hinders students more than it helps? Critics may try to repute the use of technology in the classroom but I believe what really matters “is the way we use it, the context that we use it in, and the learners who we use it for” (Chong, 2012).
Does technology changes the way society functions? In the society we live in today, technology is used for everything. No matter if we are checking our e-mail or checking the weather. Computers are the most used technology. Many people use computers for work or school. Some seem to think that computers can be a huge distraction at either work or school. Like everything else there are pros and cons when it comes to using computers in class. There can be a lot of pros when using computers in class it just depends on if a teacher or student knows how to use it. Although many people believe that using computers in class is a huge distraction, there are many positive outcome of using computers in school. Using
Technology properly used in the classroom has many advantages to a student’s learning. Technology can help students become more involved in their own learning process, which is not seen in the traditional classroom. It allows them to master basic skills at their own rate rather than being left behind. Teachers and students alike can connect to real life situations by using technology in the classroom; this can also help to prepare students for real world situations. Technology can be used to motivate students as well as to offer more challenging opportunities. It can also be used as a visualization tool to keep students interested in the subject that is being taught. When technology is used effectively, students have the opportunity to develop skills that they may not get without the use of technology (Cleaver, 2011). Assessing and monitoring students is easier on the teacher because of the ability to use technology in the classroom. When technology is used correctly it offers limitless resources to a classroom atmosphere.