Proof that the ISN has changed the way I teach

I have said before that the Interactive Student Notebook completely changed the way that I teach and I've certainly expressed my thoughts on the ISN plenty, but I haven't quite showed what exactly changed in how I teach.

At the end of the year a couple years ago I knew that I wanted to do ISNs the next year.  I kept a couple kid's binders so that I could see what they looked like by the end of the year and to figure out how I could improve upon them.  So let's compare the notes that I used to give to what I give now and I think it will be crystal clear how much ISNs have improved my teaching.  (I just chose one of the binders to use as an example to keep it consistent.)

I have always been an organized person.  Even with a regular three ring binder I had kids keep a table of contents so that they could find things.  This worked ok for kids that liked organization, but it didn't really help the other kids at all because it didn't force them to be organized.  If they didn't feel like filling out the table of contents then they just didn't.  And since it was in a binder, things fell out and got lost.  Here's an example of what I mean:

Table of Contents BEFORE

Now this is a binder I kept at the end of the year.  Notice the table of contents stops in October. Awesome.  Clearly this idea didn't work out too well.

Here's an example of some notes on scatter plots from that year:

Scatter Notes BEFORE

This makes me cringe.  Is that bad or what??!  And I don't blame the student one single bit, this is on me.  I could blame the kid (like so many people do) and say they should be a better student and pay attention and so on, but it's my job to make sure that kid is engaged and interested.  So this kid started out copying down my little pictures and then started to write some of the examples, but then stopped.  Maybe I went too fast or maybe it just wasn't interesting.  That's a problem.  The other problem is that I gave them the examples and told them where to put them.  If I recall correctly, there were like two or three examples under each type.

Now let's compare to the ISN scatter plot page. (which I talked about here)

Scatter Plot Notes AFTER

This has pretty much the same info, but it's just so much better and there was SO much more thinking going on with this versus what I did before.  The only thing that I gave the kids is the definitions.  They matched the graphs and they were way more engaged in sorting the examples than before.

Ok this next one is bad.  These were my integer notes.  I thought that I was being helpful by typing them out because I used to have kids write down this stuff and it ended up a mess.  Instead, I figured that I would give them the rules and have them record the examples.  Oh and I also went through this in ONE DAY because it should have been a review for them!

Integer Notes BEFORE

The biggest problem was the fact that I rushed this.  The information on here is good, it's just not presented in an interesting or easy to read way.  I think that it could be difficult to really find the rules on here and when things aren't easy to use, kids aren't going to use them.

Here's the foldable I give now. (more info on it)

Integer Notes AFTER

Integer Notes AFTER

No contest.  But what I think I really need to point out, is that all of the information is identical to what I gave before.  It's the same amount of explanation and examples, but just changing the presentation completely refreshes this whole thing and turns it into something WAY more useable.

Here's another one on linear relationships.  Again I thought that I was doing a good thing by typing out a frame for their notes and having them add in the content.  On the back were four tables where they had to graph and label each linear or non-linear.

Linear Relationships BEFORE

Compare to now. (more on this page)

Linear Relationships AFTER

Linear Relationships AFTER

Another example of the same information presented in a much better way.  I get way more student engagement now and I feel like the students get a much better explanation of the idea.

I wish that I could have compared the student binder to student ISN but my goal for the ISN is for the kids to use it as a reference guide so I don't ever want to keep them.  The kids' notebooks really did look really good though.

Overall, starting to use foldables and the ISN just forced me to really think about what I was doing. I find that I put more thought into lessons because my focus is on making them interesting, interactive and easy to understand. For me, giving regular "notes" isn't really an option anymore so when presenting new information it's not even something I consider. When planning I put a lot of effort into creating things that can be used as a true how-to guide instead of just writing down information so they have it. Tomorrow I'm going to go into some more detail about my actual thought process when creating new pages and foldables so stay tuned.