Here are just a few pages I've done in my notebook so far:
This is a sort we did to classify magnetic vs. nonmagnetic objects.
A drawing of a spider we observed in class, as well as some teaching tips.
An owl foldable! Inside is information I learned about owls in class that day.
A cute traffic cone foldable. The bottom part slides out. We learned about the center of gravity.
The connection: How are interactive notebooks related to differentiation and responsive teaching? I can think of several ways.
1. The notebooks are a kinesthetic activity. Students who really enjoy doing hands-on learning will love the interactive notebooks, as well as students who are artistic, and/or students who love writing. Many different talents and strengths can be utilized in the notebooks.
2. Interactive notebooks are very personal and give students a sense of ownership over the material they learned. Students are more motivated to learn when they can take pride in the work they are doing.
3. Interactive notebooks allow for creativity in synthesizing information. Students can represent their learning in a way that is meaningful and memorable to them personally.
4. The notebooks give teachers a window into students' minds. Teachers can use them to evaluate student learning and adjust future lessons accordingly.
5. Interactive notebooks help students succeed by working a wonderful review and study guide. It also helps students to retain the information they learned because they extended, responded, and evaluated what their learning when they created the pages in their notebooks.
I'm sure there are many other ways in which interactive notebooks relate to differentiation and responsive teaching, but those are the reasons that really stand out to me. I can also imagine how great it will be to send the notebook home at the end of the school year, and give the students the chance to show their parents the wonderful things they did in science! I'm so excited to use interactive science notebooks in my future classroom.
I love what I have seen of interactive notebooks... and I love that you have enjoyed the engaged learning that comes from them. However, it seems to me that there are still some things that a teacher would need to do to consider them truly differentiating... most of your justifications above talk about them in terms of really, really good instruction! And that is fine... some things don't need to be differentiated if the students are all learning and growing. Will you help me understand ways that you can think of to actually differentiate THE NOTEBOOKS, themselves?
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