Getting Ready

First I would like to explain my reasoning for starting a blog:
1. The students are blogging and the district I teach in is asking the teachers to use more technology in the classroom and to incorporate the students devices into lessons. I figure I need to understand the technology before the kids use it in science.
2. This is my first year to have an actual Interactive Student Notebook. Sure we had a spiral we glued stuff into, but it wasn't really interactive. I researched information specific to using ISNs in science and the material out there is lacking. My plan is to give other teachers an idea of how we plan as a team and set up the ISN with the students.

Background about me:
I am going into my 5th year of teaching middle school science. I have a split; 6th and 7th grade. My husband also teaches 7th and 8th grade science. I will be the primary blogger here, but occasionally he might jump in. We teach in Texas. My degree is NOT in teaching. I wanted to be a wildlife biologist but the good Lord had other plans for me. We both love the outdoors and outdoor education. We volunteer for Texas Brigades and try to get our students outside as much as possible

Planning for class:
The students will be in my classroom Monday and everything is organized and in its place. Hopefully it stays that way throughout the year. I will post pictures and info about my classroom organization and procedures later.
I am lucky that I have two awesome teams to work with, an awesome department and an awesome instructional coach. Our assistant principle (AP) wanted us to work on making our science spirals more interactive so he enlisted the help of our IC and here we are. Our plan is to incorporate the new interactive lessons with 6th grade only this year. Next year when 7th grade starts the kids will be used to it and the transition will be easier. I planned with my 6th grade team on Thursday morning. We knocked out the entire first six weeks with curriculum. We did this without thinking about how the ISN would work. We are basically doing the same things we did last year. Then Thursday afternoon we started figuring out how to put the curriculum into the spiral and make it easy, understandable and engaging for the kids. We each got out own spiral, some sticky notes and our lesson plans. It really was easy at this point. We had a general idea of how to set up the spiral and it worked

ISN set up
If you open up the spiral and look at the pages, the right page is the input side and the left side is the output side. Basically what we do in class goes on the right. Homework, reflections, data from labs and other products go on the left. (I will post pictures of this later)

We numbered the pages and used sticky notes to indicate what would go on each page while we were planning. We discussed each lesson and what we thought needed to go on the input and output sides on the spiral. I have been told that you do not always have to have an output for a lesson, but we plan too. The planning process was easy.  

Inside the cover of the spiral the students will glue the chart they will use on the STAAR in 8th grade so they get used to seeing it and using it. The front of the first page is incorporated into our first lesson about science. The students will create a picture representing what type of scientist they will be. It’s just a cover page. This page is numbered 1 and should be on the top right corner of the page. The back of the title page is page 2 and is the first table of contents page. The next page (right side) is also a table of contents page numbered 3. For their table of contents they create a T-chart with left side numbers and titles on the left and the right side titles and numbers on the right (duh!). The next two pages are instruction sheets that give them examples of what goes on each side of their spiral. The first real input is a foldable we give them listing examples of reflective activities such as writing a poem, mind map, vinn diagram and so on. They will then have to take the foldable and compare right side vs left side using a vinn diagram. We will give them the output activity so we can help them this time.

I will post pictures of my spiral as the process continues