Interactive notebooks or not?

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I first saw interactive notebooks when I was with my mentor teacher, so that was 10 years ago. I love, love, love the idea of them but I've never been able to successfully use them in my classes. I found them to be too tedious. The kids didn't do what I wanted them to do with them. I would lose track and forget where we were or what we were doing in the notebook. But I still love, love, love the idea of them. Initially, I had given up the idea of notebooks for this coming year. I had decided that it was just not worth the effort and since I have zero follow-through, not worth the stress on me. But now that I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking it would be a good idea. It's just very easy to sit here in summer and say I will do this, this, and this. It is quite another story when it's the 2nd week, students still haven't gotten their supplies and I'm just generally exhausted already. So I'm on the fence about that but I think I'm going to shelve it for now and revisit it after I finish mapping out all my classes.

On another frustrating note, I had applied for a scholarship to take a chemistry modeling class over the summer. I did not get it and wrote the class off and figured I'd try again next year. Well, I got work on Friday that some more money had come through and did I want to take the class. In many ways, yes!!! Yes, I do want to take the class. But in other ways, I have planned out my summer and would need to change everything to take that class. So what do I do? I don't know. Another dilemma that I need to work on. This one I only have a few days to figure out though.

In good news, I've gotten my chemistry curriculum map all laid out and the standards entered. Yay!!! The next step is to determine the assessments. What exactly do I want them to be able to do at the end of each unit? I'm going to start working on that today. Once that is done, I can start filling in the work/activities/labs I want to do for each unit to achieve that goal. I'm rather excited about this. Once I get this done, I'm going to move on to AP Chem and do the same thing. Then AP Bio. Once I get all those done, maybe I will revisit the notebook thing. If I have all these courses laid out for the whole year, assessments, labs, and activities, maybe I can handle doing a notebook. We will see.

So these are the things weighing on my mind. But not today. Today I will get things done.

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