Organizing Our 4th Grade Science Notebooks

So we are off to another school year.  We are all feeling a little glum since it is STILL SUMMERTIME!  However, we are enjoying every minute of both math and science because of our NOTEBOOKS.  My students were in awe that we do a notebook page MOST days rather than a worksheet.  Oh, they still get plenty of "practice" with vocabulary, structure, and responsibility...but, they also get to "OWN" their learning.  The notebooks allow individuality to show regularly.  Oh yeah - some are hesitant and cautious.  I hear the occasional, "Can I put my foldable at the bottom rather than the top?" or "Can I use my colored pencils instead of just a pencil?"...

My students are required to write the information we uncover as we develop an anchor chart, or read a particular text, or share knowledge, discuss a science based video, etc.  But, they can also personalize each and every notebook page with specific colors, labels, or relevant designs.

Read on to see how we got started on our Science Notebooks just last week!

Students brought "composition" books to school.  They chose one for Math and one for Science and wrote the appropriate labels on the outside cover of each.  We created a "Title Page", 2 "Table of Contents" pages, then began to DIG right in!

Personalized Title Page

Our first discussion concerned the ideas of what "Science is..."  Surprisingly, many of my newly promoted 4th graders filled our anchor chart with a plethora of ideas!  I then challenged them to think of something that "Science is not..."  They were amazed when everything they thought of some how and in some way could be related to science.  I had answers such as...war, rocks, air, love, pencils, etc.  Some of their ideas almost stumped me, but I was able to find something that related to science in every single example!  At this point, they were convinced that Science is an extremely important subject to learn about.  They came to the conclusion that "SCIENCE IS EVERYTHING!"  Below is my notebook page.  The students picked out the ideas they wanted or provided more of their own to fill this first page.

Our first unit of study is "Ecosystems of the World".  I have developed many different pages for this section and will provide several of those ideas in the next "Notebook Craze" blog post...so, stay tuned!