A new notebook

 Notebooks are something I have struggled with since I started teaching. During my student teaching, my mentor teacher went to a training for interactive notebooks - they were rather new at the time. When she came back we looked at them and discussed them and I fell in love. Even though I hadn't spent much time in a classroom at that point, I could immediately see the benefits to the students. I started doing some research and planned on instituting them as soon as I had my own classroom. Well, I got my own classroom, started with the notebooks and fell flat with them. They just didn't work the way I had envisioned them. That's okay. The following year I started with cut-outs and foldables. That went well for a while and that fell flat too. Every year that I tried to do them, they just didn't work out. I would forget them. Or we would be doing things that weren't in there. Many, many things happened. Eventually I just gave up on them. I always told my students they needed a notebook, but I wasn't strict about what they put in it. 

Fast forward to this year. Coming off a year and a half of not being in school or being in and out and learning a hot mess, I decided to tackle notebooks one more time. It's actually going rather well. Not perfect, but well. Then over fall break, I discover this woman who has taken notebooks to a whole new level. She has a 'formula' for using notebooks and whole lot of information to help you along the way. She is also available herself which is amazing. Now I found her on the last day of fall break, which is a bummer because these notebooks take time to set up. On the fly, I started instituting some of her formula and what I did the scholars liked. Yay!!!! But it's not enough. I want to go all in on these things for the next semester. I really believe that it will help the freshmen a whole lot if I do. Which leads me to this post. The notebook lady recommended these notebooks: 

Now, the first time I heard of these they were literally not available. I couldn't find them anywhere. They came up again a couple of weeks ago and they are everywhere now. So I got a couple from Amazon yesterday and I've put together a Donors Choose to buy some for next year. These are not cheap -$5/each - but they are worth it. First the cover is heavy duty vinyl so it should last a really long time. Also, the cover has a pocket so you can slide in a personalized sheet to identify your notebook. 

Next it has a built in table of contents: 

The TOC is something I have really struggled with and gone back and forth about. This takes it out of my hands and it's right there for them. Yay!!!!

Finally, it is large notebook sized, not like a composition book, and it has pages set up for notes: 

There is so much room to put titles (see the side), add diagrams, put notes, etc. It's really an awesome notebook. 

So over Christmas break I'm going to set it up for next semester. I'm going to set up chemistry, I don't think I'm going to use it for biology since there is a real possibility I won't have biology next year. So I'm going to keep going with the notebook I have for biology, but I'm going to set this up for chemistry and finish the year in it. Now the question becomes, do I fill in - or leave room for - the first semester and just complete the second semester? Or do I use it only for second semester and start a new one next year? The problem with the first option is that I don't really know how much room the first semester will take up so I don't know how many pages to leave blank. The second option is probably the best. I will have this for reference next year when I am creating a whole year's notebook. 

The real problem is that I want to start the notebook now, but I have to get ready for finals so don't have time for it. UGH!!!!  The agony of waiting.