For those of you who are unfamiliar with the idea of interactive science notebooks, I will attempt to give you a description of what they are, have become and what they actually can be, because everyone's interpretation of them are different and they can either be a wonderful teaching tool or a teaching nightmare depending on how you use them.
What they are:
The Interactive Science Notebooks or ISN is a way of science journaling that involves the student and teacher creating a dialogue of the learning in the classroom. I learned about them through a "History Alive" training many years ago. It was actually a way for students to graphically organize their learning by collecting and responding to their lessons within a composition book. To get kids excited about the learning, they had the students decorate the outside of the journal with picture collages about the subject matter (in this case its Science). The journal had a table of contents that was kept as you created entries (the first 4-5 pages of the notebook.) Then the students needed to number the journal pages so that every entry could be kept track of in the table of contents. Many teachers also have the students keep track of the TEKS that they have learned within the table of contents as well.
Organization:
To get kids to think about how they learn about their content area, many teachers have the students organize their ISNs in a particular order. Left side page is for students to comment on what they have learned, Right side of the page is for content that the teacher relayed to the student. So an example of this would be, notes I give the kids to write would be on the right side, what a student thinks about those notes on the left.
Year long Portfolios:
What ISNs have become, especially for 5th and 8th graders in Texas are portfolios for learning. Anything and everything that takes place in the science class gets glued into the science notebook. This is so the student doesn't lose any crucial study materials for the STAAR Science exam. This includes foldables, lab sheets, science song lyrics, diagrams, pictures, games, memory cards, 3d pop outs, essays, vocabulary lists, notes from videos, frayer models, you name it, everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink can be put into an ISN. The pages of the composition book are sewed into the binding of the notebook so chances of the pages tearing , as is the case with spiral notebooks or binders, are not likely. In fact a little over mid year it may be time to get an additional ISN because the current ISN is filled, so much so that it has problems closing, and goes from its normal 1 cm thickness, to a thickness of 6 or 7 cm, with all kinds of learning aids spewing from its sides. The teacher of students who own these monster journals are quite proud of all the learning that took place, cheerfully displaying the evidence by showing parents at PT conferences and open houses. The students are required to take home their journals and study from them because they are a great study tool... And I guess they work, I mean they look impressive right?
Drawbacks for ISN's
Okay so here are the downfalls of these types of journals. First of all, they can get away from you quite quickly. If you are rushing through the curriculum trying to "cover" everything before the big test, the evidence will certainly be inside those journals. After awhile we forget to have the kids respond to the learning and it just becomes a receptical for half completed lab sheets, ungraded responses, and foldables that got folded but not completely filled in with content. Some districts used these journals as gotchas for the curriculum. I know of one district that had regular journal inspections to determine if Science teaching was occurring in the classroom. Were the labs from the curriculum present? Did they do the district foldable? Yikes! But aside from district mandates, these journals can also become a grading nightmare. My minivan purchase was not solely based upon the fact that I had children, but also hinged on my ability to tote home crates of journals that I graded on Sundays. Think about it, if every assignment ends up in the journal so it wont get lost, this also means that you have to tote those suckers home to grade them. Oh and that table of contents that you had your kids start so that they could keep track of all of their assignments so that they could study? Well that's a hard one to keep track of too when you lose track of time during lab clean up. Sometimes I would have to set aside a good 15 minutes of class time just updating the table of contents.
All in all ISN's were a content nightmare for me in many ways until I learned some ways to use them in a reasonable fashion. Don't get me wrong, I am still in love with the idea of students journaling in the classroom because that is how real Scientist do Science. After a few years of doing ISN's I came up with a list of things that needed modification in order for my kids to do this and all of us keep our sanity. Here were my concerns:
1. The level of quality of student work declined as we progressed while using the ISN
2. I couldn't keep up with the grading ( which is probably why the quality declined)
3. lab sheets were unfinished and messy
4. Not all kids like pre-designed foldables
5. There wasn't a clear reason for having a journal other than it to be a portfolio
6. Many of my students did not care about the journal, would lose it, etc.
In my next blog entry I will discuss how I turned this whole ISN thing around so that it became a formative assessment tool for my students and helped me to become more of a standards focused teacher. If you experienced any of these issues with ISNs or have other issues that you would like to discuss, please post a comment because making these journals has become a requirement at some schools. Perhaps we can open a dialogue with those putting in ISN mandates so that the requirements are more feasible and together we can figure out ways to make journaling doable.