In 7th grade science we have been discussing cells and organic chemistry. Here are a few examples of how we did this in our ISN:
Students complete a cell structure and analogy worksheet after completing notes. we went over this as a class and they glued it on the right side. Then before they took a quiz we did a vin diagram on the left side to compare plants and animals.
For organic chemistry we started by completing a card sort about elements and compounds. I had them write the definition for element and compound on the top left side of their spiral. We discussed the sort together and watched two brainpop videos to remind them about elements and compounds. Next we read an article from discovery education about organic compounds and the students created a concept map using the information in the article. We used selective highlighting as we read.
The next day students put information together using a sort that looks like this. I did not cut it all out, just in half. Our IC made this and it is awesome!
After we did this sort I asked the students to pick 2 organic and 2 inorganic compounds and write the info on the left side of the next page. Then we talked about the information and completed notes
The ISN really worked out well for the 2012-2013 school year. Students seemed to retain more information and enjoyed doing it. I did make sure to give students time in class when we needed to glue things in and most of the students (6th graders) were able to keep up. I kept my own so they could come in during advisory and use it to help them with theirs.
This year we decided to only right down what we put on the right side in our table of contents. This seems to be easier for the students. I only have a few confused. We started by writing in our table of contents for the first few weeks and numbered our pages. We only numbered the right side pages so when we do something on the left side I say something like "open your spiral to page 10, complete this vin diagram on the left side of page 10, that's page 10 left side". I teach junior high so I have to repeat myself a lot and still students don't "hear".
The great thing about only writing what we do on the right side in our table of contents is we can have a blank left side and it's no big deal!
We glue everything in. After I hand back quizzes and tests students will glue them in on the right and do corrections on the left. I also will have them put our warm up's or engages on the left, even if we haven't glued anything on the right side yet.
The very first thing we talk about is lab safety. The students create a poster about a safety rule and we do a gallery walk as a class. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted them to do as their "output" for this activity but what I decided on worked really well. We glued our safety rules on page1 right side. They did their brainstorming for their poster on the left side 1. When we did the gallery walk, I had them draw a large 2 column, 5 row grid on the left side of page two (entire page). As they traveled around the room and looked at the posters, they either drew a picture or paraphrased the rule depicted on the poster. It worked really well. On the left side we glued a safety cartoon with questions we did in class.
In 7th grade we are learning about cells. The first thing we did was an engage to activate background knowledge. We call it donut notes. This was on the left side of their page. they write the word cells in the center of their page, then draw a circle around it big enough to right in and around. On the inside they wrote what they knew about cells and around the outside of the circle they wrote what their peers said in class discussion. We then did an interactive SMART about cell theory and cells (see below) and they glued their notes in on the left. The next thing they did was a cell analogy worksheet for homework. this was glued on the right side and to the left we did a vin diagram comparing plant and animal cells.
the ISN is a really great tool in the science classroom! especially if your textbooks are old and outdated.
