Interactive Notebook

I have the good fortune at the moment to be writing this post in Oxford, where I am chaperoning students for three weeks while they take a course here. A few times now different students have asked me what I do during the day while they are in class, and when I tell them that I am doing work, I inevitably receive a brief look of confusion and then the question, "What work do you have to do? Can't you just reuse what you did last year?" It never fails to amuse me when students reveal that they can't always conceptualize the amount of work teachers put into their classes (even when they complain about how much work it takes for them to prepare for a 15-minute presentation for a class, and thus forget that we subject ourselves to a much higher standard of engagement every day!).

So what exactly have I been working on? Well, three of the problems I face with my freshmen world history class is: 1. their inability to organize themselves; 2. their inability to succinctly and yet thoroughly take notes, particularly because English is a second language for most of them and so their processing time is a bit longer to be able to articulate concepts learned in class; and 3. the fact that they do not revisit their notes until they absolutely have to (i.e. an upcoming assessment).

In the three years I have taught at my school, I have gotten a lot better at anticipating the organization problem, and so it's become second-nature for me to do things like use visual and audio reminders so that students write down something important, or to remind them to use their planner etc. etc. As for the second problem, I have used a weekly assignment called a 'journal sheet' that allows students to reflect on what they learned for the week, and it also forces them to read the news. A sample journal sheet is below.

Journal Sheet (2011-12)

The problem with the journal sheet, however, is that every year it does not become as much of a routine as I would like. So one of my goals is to figure out how I will implement a more interactive way for my freshmen students to handle their notebook since this could attack all three problems at once. I first got this idea when my friend Bowman introduced me to this post: http://statteacher.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/algebra-2-interactive-notebook.html .  The idea is simple: students maintain a physical notebook throughout the year which is solely devoted to your class and is a space for them not only in which to take notes, but also to reflect and build on what they have learned. The latter idea is my favorite thing about the interactive notebook. I know that a lot of teachers have tried digital solutions to my three problems (particularly by using OneNote and sharing notes/assignments via the school network), but instead of inviting the demons that come alongside relying on computers (other software distractions; low battery supplies; internet outages), I want to keep it simple for my students and use actual notebook paper. Plus I think it gives students the advantage of being creative with their own hands, as you'll see below. I can debate the advantages of forbidding computer use in my classroom in a future post, but for now here is how I have decided to implement the interactive notebook in my class:

• I will create my own interactive notebook along with the students. This way they will have a model notebook which to refer to throughout the year, and I will theoretically be able to use it as an example to show students at the start of the next year. But I will also call it a 'portfolio' rather than an interactive notebook, just so they recognize that the object is meant to be a place for everything to be collected, not just notes.

• At the start of the year students will design a cover for their portfolio in order to personalize it and give them a sort of 'ritual' in which to embrace its importance. This website had good instructions and a rubric: http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/lessons/ushistory/isn.cover.directions.htm 

• At the start of each unit I will give students a template like the one below to paste into their portfolio so that they have a sense of what the essential questions are for each unit and what sources we will be looking at (which will hopefully also reinforce the importance of source material for historians).

Students will paste such a table on a page but leave space (perhaps a whole left-hand page) for revisiting it at the end of the unit, with the goal of drawing a picture (or pictures) of the main elements of the unit near the table. We will also use the table to revisit the essential questions and reflect on the sources in class or as homework.

• I will not use the right side of the notebook as an 'input' side and the left side as an 'output' side. While I understand that is a critical part of the interactive notebook, I hesitate  to use this format for two reasons:
• Since this is the first time I am doing an interactive notebook, I am having a hard time conceptualizing what I want my students' 'input' side to look like when they are simply taking notes from a class discussion. This website: http://kalamitykat.com/2012/01/08/interactive-notebooks/  has wonderful photos of what an interactive notebook can look like, and she has a great suggestion that students NOT turn the page in their notebook unless explicitly asked by their teacher, so if they need more paper for notes, they just glue loose-leaf pages to the page and fold them. Yet I don't think this would be practical for my class, seeing as how throughout the year my students struggle to learn what is the best way for them to take notes. This means that normally their notes end up having different lengths (some write what appear to be transcripts of class, while others are better at being succinct), so it is hard for me to imagine the chaos that would ensue if class was stopped so some students could grab loose leaf paper for their notebook. So I would rather have students discover how they want to take notes and not be limited by having to leave the left side of their notebooks blank. 
• I am 99% sure that my students will NOT do anything on the output side unless it is made a formal assignment, so I will have to frequently give reflection/application assignments for the students to do in their notebook (both in and outside of class). Thus I do not think leaving the left side blank is necessary - they could do the reflection/application assignments in the space after their notes.
• Some ideas for what kind of reflection/application assignments I could give are here: http://mrsgannon.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/assignment-table.pdf  and here:  http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/lessons/ushistory/lpwhatishistory.htm and here: http://www.mrgreer.net/notebookleftside.html . The last website also has a wonderful explanation of the rationale for interactive notebooks, including the fact that "students need to revisit a newly learned concept at least 7 times to be able to have embedded it into their long-term memories".
• Note that the basic idea of Cornell notes is embedded in the interactive notebook, so I will just have students periodically go over their notes as an assignment (a wonderful site for using the Cornell note system is here: http://statteacher.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/cornell-notes-in-math-class.html)

• http://kalamitykat.com/2012/01/08/interactive-notebooks/also has a great idea for creating a little pouch that students can use to insert vocab cards. I love this idea because I do not usually assign identifications on my quizzes and exams because my tests are weighed toward analytical short and long essay questions, but having students create their own vocabulary cards would be another great way for them to review the material. Here's another helpful site in that regard: http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/lessons/ushistory/ch1vocab.htm, so expect a future post once the year starts on what criteria I will use for students to create their own vocabulary cards.

• The downside to this whole system is that I will have to grade the portfolios fairly frequently in order to ensure that the students are serious about taking notes and reflecting on the material. Yet I do not think this has to take a lot of time, and will give me a better sense of just how students are taking notes in my class; I found a sample rubric here http://www.ljhs.sandi.net/faculty/MTeachworth/avid-summer-05-institute/oh12interactivenotebookrubr.htm which is good, and which I can use perhaps bi-weekly when I check their portfolios. But if I assign a reflection assignment as homework, then it would be easy to grade it simply for completion. Nonetheless here is where I will have to put in some further thought because I plan to use the Standards Based Grading system, so I need to consider how I will incorporate the interactive notebook.

Any feedback/suggestions about my thoughts here would be wonderful! And of course I plan to post about how this plan all works out in the fall…

P.S. Just so you don't think all I'm doing is work and chaperoning here in Oxford, I want to reassure you I have time for exploration and fun this summer as well! :)

Purpose

There is nothing quite like having a teaching colleague with whom you can have discussions that only fuel your passion for teaching. One of my closest friends at the school I work at is named Bowman, and he started a blog a long time ago that was originally a personal blog with anecdotes from his daily life. Yet since the school at which we work tends to be all-consuming, many of his anecdotes came to center around his classroom and/or boarding life experiences, and so after some thought about the possibilities of using his blog as a pedagogical resource, last year he transformed it simply into a blog about teaching math. Now his blog is a gold mine for teachers - it provides both practical and theoretical discussions, and he has used it very well as a place to bounce questions back and forth with other educators around the world.

I mention this story because it really convinced me of the benefits of technology when it is used with a purpose. Bowman would be particularly happy that this was the lesson I received from his experience because he is someone who prides himself, rightfully, on being efficient and effective, and his blog is just one more instance in which he has been successful in that regard. The conversations that he has been able to have with other teachers through his blog (including myself!), and the sort of grassroots professional development that has come out of it, made me curious as to what benefits I could derive for my own classroom using the blogosophere. So Bowman introduced me not only to Google Reader, where I can follow a selection of blogs incredibly easily, but also to a few wonderful history blogging sites, and he also shared with me ideas about how I could begin to change the way I teach, particularly through using student notebooks more effectively and the Standards Based Grading system. (Note: this story also illustrates why working with people beyond your own department is so compelling!)

So as this summer started I began following blogs and making plans for how to change what I do in my freshmen world history class in particular. Then I came across the following post: http://stephenlazar.com/blog/2012/07/my-complete-2011-2012-teaching-portfolio/. This was a wonderful read, and in particular its reflective quality was highly appealing to me. Maybe it is because I am in the middle of a summer in which I intend to reflect and change a lot about my classes, but the post was wonderful in articulating the purpose behind not only the blog but Stephen's intentions as a teacher. It also got me to thinking: I was having a hard time finding blogs about teaching history that were as good as the math history blogs that are all over the internet. Maybe this is because I am still a relative amateur at this blogging thing - or maybe it's because many history teachers are techno-phobic, but Stephen's blog was one of the few blogs that really combine practical advice with theoretical ideas, like Bowman's blog....

I began to wonder if I had the courage to start my own blog. I hesitate to use the word 'courage' - it's not like I'm going into a battle zone - but I am someone who thinks *a lot* before speaking, so a blog just seemed like a massive undertaking, especially in terms of time. And I find it somewhat strange to be so public in a space where I am not sure who (if anyone!) is reading what I write, and yet as Stephen Lazar's post so eloquently demonstrated, it is important for people in my profession to be reflective and be willing to share, so I have decided that if this blog can help me gain as well as share ideas with other history teachers, then it will be a worthy professional experience.

So as to the purpose of this blog? Over the summer I will work on changing my freshmen history course a lot, so this blog will be a place where I post many of the ideas I work on, particularly in terms of how I intend to apply the Standards Based Grading system and revamp the framing of my curriculum and its individual units. Then I hope when the school year starts I can start posting not only one how my summer planning worked and didn't work, but also on my daily experiences both in terms of lessons, classroom management, and all the other million things that go into working at a boarding school.

So that's my purpose...we'll see how this all turns out!