ISN Course Guide & Expectations

This post is all about the first few actual ISN pages.  This section goes along with all my first week of school stuff.  Since I use the right side as the input and left side as the output, I'm going to go through the pages in that order.  

Pages 1-2 "Class Policies and Expectations"

Page 2 is for the course expectations.  The first thing that goes in is my Classroom Expectations.  I print two of these per sheet of paper and have the kids cut them to fit.  This gets taped down to page 2 using four pieces of tape in the corners as shown below.  

When I give the kids directions on setting this up, I show them the picture below on the Smart Board so they know exactly where to put it and how to tape it.

The next sheet also goes on page 2.  This is where things get fun.

Front of the Course Guide

Back of the Course Guide

This is a double sided page (if you can print directly to a Xerox machine, you can print double sided at 75% and it works perfect).  This page gets put right on top of the Classroom Expectations and the tape only goes on the left side so that this page flips like a book.

Page 1 is where the kids now process the information.  This part is where I started to fall in love with the ISN (it's the little things).  For my first 5 years of teaching I would hand out the Course Guide and I highly doubt that kids ever looked at it again.  They certainly didn't take it home and reread it.  The activity on the left side here forces them to do that.

This is a "high-five" (idea courtesy of Krystina) they trace their hand...which they LOVE...and write one piece of key information in each finger.  Let them have fun with it.  I had kids that colored the nails, drew on jewelry, watches, etc.  What was so cool about this was that the kids actually went through all of my class information and picked out what they thought was most important.  

Simple yet so awesome.  My favorite part of this was actually what I got to learn about the kids. Some kids focused more on consequences (three missed homeworks = detention and things like that) while others focused on rewards (perfect homework for the marking period = 2 pt grade boost)

It was also fun that the kids were SO excited to do this page for homework.  I had mine done to use as an example and all period they just kept asking, "Are we really going to get to trace our hands??!" "Can we color the nails?!" And these were 8th graders.  No matter how old they get they still love this stuff.