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For the new school year, I want to introduce science interactive notebooks to my students even though I had never done it before (or seen it in action during student teaching). I thought it would be a great way to help students get more organized, help teach visual literacy (w/ graphic organizers and foldables), and prod students into deeper thinking w/ labs and activities. However, after picking up some reading material from the school, I found out that my director ordered new texts from Pearson. They're called "interactive textbooks"; soft-bound workbooks that allow students to write directly in them. Now I'm not sure if I should go w/ the interactive notebook now because it seems redundant. Has anyone used these interactive textbooks before? How can I work around this? Any ideas for making it work with both??

Cheska and Tina, I also am interested in these "Interactive" Journals and Notebooks that are coming out commercially. I have been using Notebooks in my 6th grade classroom for 5 years now and feel that they are necessary for the student to use. They take time to develop them properly, always in a process of revision-however, I have seen the results of the students use of these Journals in both increased "Test scores" and the students personal, intrinsic gains in science. I would like to see a hybrid Journal, containing a way for individual teachers to customize their curriculum into a commercial, state objectives designed model. [Just to help make teaching easier & save time-especially for new teachers. It took me 5 years to get my Journals where they are right now & I feel there is still alot of work to go before I am satisfied.]

Our jr. high adopted the Pearson Interactive Texts for this year. Obviously, we haven't used them much yet. I really like the amount of reading and writing support in them. The only complaint I have is that the texts we received are printed on a different type of paper than the samples we received. The samples were printed on a slicker, thinner grade of paper. Our new texts are printed on a thicker, rougher grade. This made the book thicker. It's still not very heavy but I would rather have had the other paper. The lady who conducted our inservice earlier this week has turned the question over to her manager to get an answer to this. Regardless, I'm still looking forward to using this series.

This is such an interesting thread. Thank you for starting it, Cheska. I am not familiar with the commercial interactive text/notebooks either and will be interested in hearing how you and Tom find them after using them for a few weeks. Will they make it easier for students to "do" science? Understand science? Will it encourage them to document their learning? Will they take the place of "old-fashioned" student notebooks/journals? Or will students still need both? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind. After being sold on the importance of using student notebooks, I want to know if these commercially generated ones are worth the extra money school district will be dishing out.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one using these new interactive texts! Tom, KIT and let me know how they're working for you! Are you using interactive notebooks with them too? To be honest, I was completely overwhelmed with the materials. I have both 5th and 6th grade texts, and they not only come with the textbooks but also with ready-to-go activities, short labs, digital resources, ELL read-along versions, and TE workbooks with STEM, PBL, and interdisciplinary projects. This is great for a first year teacher like me, but it does take a long time to try to figure out how to use everything--there's SO MUCH! Thank goodness I stumbled onto the online tutorials, which helped me figure out what was what! The interactive texts focus heavily on reading, writing, and developing learning/organizational skills which I think is great. However, I am wary about the ready-to-go lab kits... they seem cooky-cutter to me, and I'd have to work my way around them to provide deeper inquiry opportunities. Still unsure about how I'll work in an interactive notebook with the texts, but I still want my students to use them. Maybe, as Tina suggested, more emphasis on using interactive notebooks as class journals and daily learning logs?

Hi - This is my first year teaching science. My students have the black and white marble tablets and also a binder that they file current assignments and graded work. I am not sure what to use the tablets for. Several posts are mentioning "interactive notebooks." What does this mean. I appreciate any feedback and suggestions for using marble tablets. Thank you!

This year, I am also getting interactive textbooks. I am unsure of how this will go, but as soon as I get them and start using them I will be sure to post about them. Also, if you are doing interactive notebooks there are a lot of great resources in the NSTA journals. I have used them in the past and really liked how they worked out. Jennifer

Hi Cheri and thread participants,
Cheri, there is another thread about Notebooks that might be of use to you. There are several resources embedded in that thread for ways to use science notebooks. I hope this helps.
Carolyn

Wow, I am interested in hearing the results of these interactive textbooks myself. Right now we have had a moratorium on buying any textbooks for the last couple of years (Hawai'i). Hopefully when our funding comes back a there will be more information from teachers about these interactive textbooks and notebooks to help me make a better decision on what to do. I have been using interactive notebooks (non-commercial) in my science classes for the past 4 years and found them to be very useful both for the me as a teacher seeing as the progress of the students' thought processes and understanding as well as helping students to become better critical thinkers. It is also a very important communication tool with parents, since my students are required to show their notebook to their parents once a week and explain what they are learning about. This also makes the students accountable for their learning not only to me but themselves and their parents. The iNotebook, as I call them in class take a lot of time to develop but they become a personal portfolio of each student's learning and since students create and work hard on their iNotebook it becomes a personal item to students which they value. In fact in all my years of using the iNotebook, I have only had a handful left in my class after the end of the year, most student take them and keep them.

When I think of an “interactive notebook” the first thing that comes to mind is the iPad. After doing some research I was a little disappointed to learn that electronics has nothing to do with the notebook being interactive. I envisioned a notebook with a touch screen that could be used for journaling, textbook downloads, assignments downloads, etc. Of course, cost is an issue I didn’t think about. Back to the interactive notebooks – many websites offer ideas on how to create your own and this immediately formed the idea of student created notebooks. Couldn’t the students themselves create a type of notebook based on a model presented to them by the teacher? My idea is that the students will produce an outline of the course giving them an idea of what is to come. It’s sort of like conditioning their prior knowledge for future lessons. Since time is always an issue, perhaps the students could create them at the start of each unit so that there isn’t a great deal of time wasted at the start of the year. I am interested to see the notebooks in action.