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This book is a great starting point for using Science Notebooks in your classroom.

Science Notebooks: Writing about Inquiry by Lori Fulton & Brian Campbell

Good luck!

Hey Ashley,

My professor gave us some insight with notebook recording as well, and it's definitely given me a new perspective of the use of notebooks. She's been going over phenomena when students need to record down their observations, insight, prior knowledge, generally anything that can be accounted for to demonstrate the engagement within your students. So activities that involve observational skills and the use of their five senses would be a great start to creating their notebooks. For example, an activity where the students partner up and need to use the five senses to describe to their partner what fruit it is without actually saying the name of the fruit. 

If I were to organize the enteries, I would base it on the standards you wish to touch on as the school year goes on. For example, divide the notebook pages based on the NGSS topics, which is life science, earth and space science, and physical science, then fill each section in that relates to that topic. So, if you have 100 pages in your notebook, approximately 33 pages will be sectioned off for each topic and the students can write in their enteries with the designated section.

Hopefully that makes sense, but this is something I would like to try when I have a classroom of my own!

Hey Ashley,

I am pre-service teacehr and my mentor teacher have students make science journal. They are recoarding everything that is relate to the science in that journal. We just made the terrarium with the students and they are recording the data in the journal. And there is vocabulary section where they put the new vocabulary that they learn in that section. They do every writing in that journal that is relate to science. It's great, kids know what do to and where do to when we do science. Also, in this way you can incorporate writing into the content!