The Power of Interactive Student Notebooks
I’ve spent the past seven months teaching history and social science courses in Tokyo, Japan. In that time, I have gained invaluable experience and have been given the opportunity to explore how I will implement teaching pedagogy when I return to America in about four months. One component I have decided to introduce into my classroom is the Interactive Student Notebook (ISN). It is an incredibly powerful tool to improve classroom management and responsibility.
According to the National Council of Social Studies, Interactive Student Notebooks allow teachers to organize the curriculum by letting the students organize the class notes and other activities in a meaningful and personalized manner (Huth, 2017). The notebook can be compared to a portfolio that students build throughout the class.
ISNs have been around for some time; however, I can only recall one experience with them from my own middle and secondary schooling: my sixth-grade civics class. I remember that it was a really helpful tool in getting my classmates and me to understand the content. Civics is among the more difficult courses in Virginia, USA middle schools. Most places in Virginia, in fact, offer it as an eighth-grade class; my school was an exception. I believe our use of ISNs in Civics helped us critically think about the content, which aided us on our end of year exam.
ISNs are based on scientific research around the left and right hemispheres of the brain. As a result, the left and right pages of the notebook hold different ways of expressing content. Wist (2006) presents an analysis of research on Interactive Student Notebooks as well as their relationship to the brain. Cuth (2017) present the left side as the student side where the student is free to demonstrate their understanding however s/he likes. The right side is the teacher side where the student takes notes, adds completed worksheets, etc. Interactive Student Notebooks are a great way to teach students note-taking skills.
The innate nature of ISNs allows students to write notes, collect data, and organize information on one side of the page; while they process and produce material on the other. Teachers can require students to jot down notes, place information into charts, and sketch out information, among other activities on one side. This part is no different from a traditional notebook; however, the IN goes a step further. It provides a processing component to help students grapple with their learning. More importantly, it keeps it all in one place — a necessity in helping students become more organized and responsible.The processing activities allow teachers to incorporate more abstract work into their teaching. For example, students can use the processing part of the interactive notebooks to complete RAFTs (Role, Audience, Format, Topic), journal entries, and other performance-based tasks.
ISNs are designed to be creative and to give students more control over their note-taking. This will vary by course, grade, and/or individual class. Some students will need more guidance and scaffolding, while others will jump into the process on their own. In this way, ISNs require a gradual release of responsibility. Additionally, there can be cross-over between the sides of the notebook. Some students, for example, may be more comfortable with charts and tables. Therefore, their processing pages will be more structured than their peers.
In implementing ISNs in your classroom, I would recommend the following:
- using spiral notebooks as the medium for the ISN. Composition notebooks can work; however, the size and shape may make it more difficult to glue sheets into the notebook.
- use glue and tape to secure pages into the ISN. Use glue as a base, and one or more piece(s) of tape to secure it.
Interactive Student Notebooks are a great way to structure class instruction. They are notebooks for students to collect content-based information. They are incredible sources of processing that allow students to grapple with themes, concepts, and content. They serve as a medium for the production of student work that helps showcase student understanding and creativity while keeping it all stays in one place. The ISN template for MS History by Cuth (2017) is a great guideline for implementing INs for History.
Editor’s Note:
This post was originally published on 21CenturySocialStudies, Just another Edublog site by Andrew Mills and has been modified by him for A Teacher’s Hat. It is a valuable addition to the publication as it opens up teaching strategies in Social Studies, particularly. Pinterest has many examples of the notebooks being used in STEM as well. I personally love the idea of Interactive Student Notebooks and they remind me of my two favorite things — bullet journals and scrapbooks.
Differentiated instruction is ensuring that learning happens in an accessible way for the student. ISNs allow the students to format their thoughts however they find suitable, thus, differentiating by learning styles — someone who loves writing can love in the notebooks, another student who would rather draw is free to express his/her ideas through diagrams, charts and pictures.
References and Resources
Huth, C. (2017, November 18). Back to Basics: Modern Note-taking the da Vinci Way. Retrieved March 10, 2018, from https://www.socialstudies.org/conference/back-basics-modern-note-taking-da-vinci-way/50146
Wist, C. (2006). Putting it all together: Understanding the research behind interactive notebooks. School of Education, Curriculum and Instruction Elementary. Available at https://tccl.arcc.albany.edu/knilt/images/d/d0/Interactive_Notebooks_Research.pdf
