Science Notebooks Maximize Learning For All Students

Hello Fellow Notebook Enthusiasts!!

"Science notebooks are more than a collection of notes about science. Science notebooks replicate, to a certain degree, the notebooks that scientists keep. They contain plans, questions, quantitative and qualitative data, thoughts, explanations, analysis and more. The development of content through scientific practices drives the science notebooks for students." -Fulton

                                    Help Students Organize Their Thinking 

Question/Problem 

• Relate to “big ideas” and reflect standards  
• Are clear and concise 
• Can be investigated 

Prediction (when appropriate) 

•  Proposes a possible answer to question or problem 
• Connects to prior experience 
• Gives a reason “because” 

Data/Observation 

• Recorded in students’ own words 
• Are organized, accurate, complete and detailed 
• Includes appropriate tables, charts, graphs and diagrams 

Conclusion (Wrap Up) 

• Written in students’ own words 
• Answers question and supports it with evidence from investigation (data, observations) 
• Compares results with predictions (when appropriate) 
• Includes claim-evidence-reasoning statement (when appropriate) 
• Includes clear summary of meaning of the data 

Reflection 

• Generated by students 
• Includes “I Wonder” questions 

     This summer I attended a week long training around science notebooks, inquiry-driven learning and unpacking the NGSS. A resource we were given was a book" "Science Notebooks- Writing About Inquiry" by Lori Fulton and Brian Campbell. It was a very easy to follow book  based in research, and written by two science teachers. There are also chapters that interact with scientists and engineers and include exemplars of authentic science writing, and student samples. 

Recommended Reading to support this:

"Five Good Reasons to use Science Notebooks"-Joan Gilbert and Marleen Kotelman

Science Talk Primer by Sarah Michaels and Cathy O'Conner

Developing a Scientific Argument by Lori Fulton and Emily Poelter

                                                    Advantages for Students 

• Science notebooks are a learning tool for students to record their thinking and learning.
• Chronological record of an investigation 
• Record of questions and ideas for future investigation 
•  Learner-constructed reference and resource for later discussion, review, or final products 
• Rough draft with the primary audience being the student 
• Written reflections to clarify a student’s understanding of key scientific ideas 
• Opportunity to self assess/peer assess understanding of concepts or skills 

                                                      Advantages for Teachers 

• Science notebooks are a tool for teachers to support student learning. 
• Formative or summative assessment providing evidence of student learning in content, process, and ability to communicate 
• Portfolio of learning to be shared with peers, parents, partner agencies, and community. 
• Opportunity to teach specific skills related to writing, scientific inquiry or math 
• Integration of meaningful opportunities to practice expository writing 
• Planning tool for the direction of the next steps of instruction

As always, please leave comments in the blog to share how you are using Science notebooks effectively with your students, or questions you might have.

Reminder: November 5-6th is the Professional Learning for Disciplinary Literacy for Science at Marina Village. The exact room will be emailed out to all participants. If you are interested in attending please contact your administrator ASAP for permission, and secure a sub in AESOP. If you need more details about the learning opportunity please reference the PL catalog (also linked in the right hand side of the blog under resources.)

A great resource for inquiry

San Diego County Achievement Gap Task Force

                                                   Hello Fellow Educators!!

Student panel at Superintendent Task Force

   The Achievement Gap Task Force is an annual event that brings more than 400 superintendents, principals, counselors, teacher leaders, and administrators together. This year student voice came to life with a student panel made up of student representatives from across the county...including our very own Monarch School students. The morning started off with Viet Mai, a math teacher and spoken word poet. He said so many powerful lines, so quickly and beautifully linked together....mixing math concepts, memories, and social justice. He spoke of the importance of identity, "I do this for you. The everyday heros. The hearts among the heartless. The thoughtless. Mindless." So many teachers can relate to the feeling of wearing many hats in service of our students. Mai said, "I don't just teach math, I teach problem solving,"....and reminded us "Being divided doesn't prove anything." 

SD County Leaders at work for a better future for our kids

    As Viet Mai exited the stage as the keynote, Assistant Superintendent Jean Madden/SDCOE briefly spoke about the importance of student voice and preparing kids for college and career. There were some frightening statistics for young people. 

• Only 26% of San Diego students will complete a post secondary education.
• There are 39, 329 7th graders in SD County. 31,665 will graduate in 4-5 years. The non-graduates average income is $18,451
• The path to college and career readiness may be closed to students and families that don't know how to navigate it.

Dr.Ward asking students, "Who do you do it for"

When the student panel formed it was amazing how honest, vulnerable, and real they kept it with all the adults. Matt Simon asked the panel if they could design their own   school here in SD to serve a struggling population what is the one thing that they would make sure was present:

• 
  
• This is what they collectively landed on:
• Strong bonds/relationships 
• Open Space, College Atmosphere
• Student voice and choice (allowed to express themselves)
• Connection with the other students
• The Arts to express themselves
• After school extracurricular activities                                                                               
•  Time where students can talk to students
• Tutoring

     There were some very powerful and courageous points made by many speakers today, adults and kids alike. Dr. Ward discussed his concern for  all kids and specifically kids of color, most blatant with African-American boys, and general statistics around their challenges, and  future success.  Surrounded by educational leaders from all districts the entire room shifted focus to the sense of urgency around  transforming our schools so that every child gets the education he or she deserves every day; so that the experiences and outcomes for students are not predictable based on their home language, zip code, socio-economic status, race or ethnicity, or gender. 

    We then moved into our outbreak sessions. I participated in the EdCamp Session, which reminded me of the unconference that we have done at JCCS. The beauty of this process is that you end up in a conversation with like-minded colleagues that have a personal interest in topic at the table. Our conversation was around culturally responsive curriculum and although there was no "expert/facilitator" at the table the discussion turned to sharing best-practices, ideas, and just a really cool conversation. There is so much to learn from each other. I decided to hop on the twitter waves pretty hard with my own tweets, and following the #agtf15 a lot of big, chunk take-aways surfaced. I encourage you to follow the feed, for more specific examples and emerging themes.

EdCamp! Session

     One of the high-lights of the experience for me was hearing the students speak about their dreams, hopes, and needs. Monarch students were present both on the student panel, and in an awesome compilation video that featured students and staff acknowledging the power of student voice.  We hear a lot about student choice and voice in education these days. Hearing students talk about the power of feeling heard is extremely powerful. One speaker, from Kenya, shared when she transitioned to the US she felt invisible, and "would go days without anyone hearing her voice. The isolation killed me." She uses her past struggles to support other kids looking to find their voice, and connect with staff and peers to strengthen their chances of success. 

Monarch Student sharing the importance of knowing "she has a voice"

     Please share techniques you are using, and finding successful to connect with students and empower them to use their voice.

Have a great day!!

A Major Congratulations to our Colleague Jeffra Becknell!! Just Named Top 10 Finalist for San Diego County Teacher of the Year!!!

                                                    Three Cheers for Jeffra Becknell!!

Jeffra Becknell on stage at Salute to Teachers

      Saturday night was the annual Salute to Teachers event televised live from the Balboa Theatre by Cox Cable. This is a spectacular event that is often referred to as the Academy Awards for Teachers. This year was extra special as the show celebrated its 25th year celebrating teachers, and highlighting the amazing things going on in classrooms across diverse San Diego County.

Jeffra, her family, and JCCS Family

 

 JCCS has had a strong presence at the show which validates the hard work and dedication of all the stakeholders in our organization that work tirelessly for our amazing students who are often underserved and overlooked.

                                  Video of Jeffra's acceptance speech courtesy of Stephen Keiley

      This year Jeffra Becknell represented San Diego County Office of Education, and is a teacher at at Monarch School. Jeffra has also worked at YOU, and San Pasqual Academy. She has a background in law, but gravitated toward teaching and JCCS because of her passion for social justice. Jeffra is as authentic as it gets. She is an amazing representative for JCCS, SDCOE and the teaching profession!

Jeffra on stage

     It was an honor to briefly share the stage with Jeffra as I had the pleasure of announcing her name as a finalist at the event. I have always looked up to Jeffra, and been impressed by her dedication to ALL kids, and making sure they understand their voice.

         Congratulations Jeffra!! You are Amazing!! We are all so proud of you!!

NGSS Resources Available

Hello JCCS Science Teachers                   New NGSS Resources Available

Achieve and the Teaching Channel Release New Classroom Videos  Demonstrating Transitions to NGSS

We are excited to announce that four new videos highlighting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are now available online. Achieve and the Teaching Channel collaborated with an elementary school teacher and high school teacher from Boone County, KY to capture snapshots of what NGSS early implementation looks like in classrooms. The featured classroom examples illustrate how some educators are transitioning instruction to help students meet the goals of the NGSS. These videos are not intended to signal a one-size-fits-all approach to implementing the NGSS. Rather, the snapshots demonstrate how specific teachers are beginning to transition to the standards and offer guidance to educators currently considering how to best engage students in three-dimensional learning.  Click the links below to watch the videos by topic: Video 1: Energy & Matter Across Science Disciplineshttps://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/cross-discipline-lesson-achieve  Video 2: Making Claims from Evidence  https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/claims-evidence-science-lesson-achieve  Video 3: First Steps Towards Transitioning to the NGSS  https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/transition-to-ngss-achieve  Video 4: Working as a Team https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-collaboration-achieve   **Let us know in the blog comments what you found useful, and what you are already doing in your classroom with Science Instruction.**

Math Content Seminar

                                                    Hello Fellow Mathematicians

Our Fearless Leader Mindy Shacklett starting us off

This was the third math content seminar and it was a...Wait a minute, you haven't heard of the Math Content Seminar? Or you've heard of it and never thought it could be worth the time?  Hmm, not sure where this is going but let's see if it can be untangled.

I decided to attend the math content seminars that are taking place twice a month on Thursday not because I am a math teacher but because I want to know what our students are going to be doing with the Carnegie math and I want to see how it plays out as a teacher.  Mindy Shacklett has set up the seminars to provide another resource for the math teachers and it has turned out to be a very lively part of the work.

Sarah and Dorothy working out a problem

There were about 20 of us in the room yesterday in a room that comfortably supports 15.  We immediately dove into lesson 2.3.  And next thing I know I find myself struggling to keep straight the terminology--function, inequalities, independent variables, dependent variables.  Suddenly I am back in my high school and just like then, I am surreptitiously glancing over at my neighbor's paper to see how he labeled things (thanks Petia for your unknowing help).  But where it got exciting was that people soon began sharing stories and strategies for how the lessons are playing out in the classroom.  What really struck me was how intuitively teachers began modeling how they scaffolded the material.  For instance Trevor Darling noted how when he would teach the lesson he would reduce the amount of information that students would see in their initial exposure to the page.  "This is to make it more manageable for our kids--this is too much stuff for me so I figure it will be too much all at once for students."  Or Kate Malone sharing how she helps students keep the terminology straight.  Letting students struggle with the material but providing them access points.

Trevor breaking it down

 Of course you can't have teachers cooped up in a room that long without some wonderful absurdities cropping up.  Such as the coincidental (?) repeated references in the book to a date that our students regularly love to cite as their favorite and our own snickering about it.  But even that led to some serious talk about how teachers deal with things that can make a lesson go sideways.  Over and over again, we had to compartmentalize our thinking so that we could experience the lesson both as a teacher and as a learner.  It makes for some pretty cool existential conversation.  Thinking about our thinking.  Whoa.

Nearing the end with my peeps

Next thing I knew it was 6:00 and the session was over.  We had grappled with the lesson and prevailed.  As our students do more often than not.

Mindy showing us some resources

Writer's Notebooks in the ELA classroom

Why have students keep a writer’s notebook?

• To promote daily, consistent practice and build stamina (meets CCSS Writing 10 standard)
• To create a nonthreatening, safe writing environment and climate.
• To provide students with meaningful and authentic writing choices.
• To give a voice to diverse and common experiences they have outside of the classroom.
• To get students familiar with writing language and terms that focus on specific writing traits
• To aid in capitalizing on individual interest to increase motivation.
• To serve as a tool to increase empathy for one another as writers and learners.
• To provide a safe place where seed ideas can grow and flourish depending on student’s choices!

Zumbrunn & Krause. “Conversations with Leaders: Principles of Effective Writing Instruction.” The Reading Teacher 65.5 (2012): 346-353. Print. Ranch-Burh, W. “Motivating Readers Through Voice and Choice.” Voices in the Middle 20.2(2012): 58-59. Print.

Please note: A writer’s notebook is not a journal.  Make sure to differentiate the two with students.

How to start?

1. Create your own writer’s notebook with a few entries.  Share this with students on day 1. Continue to write when students write and share your writing frequently.
2. Have students decorate notebooks with quotes, photos, drawings, words, etc.  and then use packing tape to laminate.
3. As a class, determine agreements regarding the notebooks and create an anchor chart to keep posted in the classroom:

• What organizational pieces should be in the notebook? (Title, table of contents, dedication, date/page #//title each entry, etc.).  
• What can go in the notebook? Although students can keep what’s in their notebook confidential, they do need to show the teacher that they have been actively working in it.   
• Will students have control over what they want the teacher to read/give feedback on?
• Is the notebook expected to be on student desks every day?
• Is everyone expected to write everyday?
• How will the notebooks be graded?  See links below for rubric examples.

Ideas for writing for the few weeks

• Likes/Dislikes
• 100 Things I love
• Timeline of major events from your life
• Things you wonder about

These may provide seeds for future writing assignments.

Daily writing ideas

1x a week - Writer’s circle (about 15 min).  

• Establish expectations - time limit, silence, sharing process, etc.
• Move chairs into a circle
• Give each student a post it note and have them write one word on it.  It can be anything or you can ask them to write something around a text that you are reading, a theme you are studying, etc.
• The facilitator randomly picks a post-it and reads the word aloud.
• The circle writes non-stop for 2-3 minutes on the topic (stream of consciousness).  It can be narrative, bullets, questions -- anything goes.  If students don’t know what to write, they write the topic over and over until the time is up.
• When time is up, pencils are down.  A participant starts by sharing a word or phrase from his/her writing (if they want) and go around the circle.  Students have the option to say pass.
• If desired, students can give positive feedback, but practice using accountable talk (have sentence stems for students to use). (Sentence starters for positive feedback)
• Repeat the process until you have done this for about 15-20 minutes.

Other days of the week - mini-lessons on writing

• Teacher teaches a short lesson on writing -- habits of mind of a writer, how to write a thesis statement, figurative language, specific genre, etc. (10-15 min)
• Students are then given time to experiment with the learning in their notebook.

Helpful websites

Setting up the writer’s notebook

http://www.madeiracityschools.org/userfiles/105/Classes/18629/Writers%20Notebook%20Cover%20directions%20and%20rubric.pdf

How to use a writer’s notebook

http://amaesd.org/media/TWP/Grade%20Level%20Teaching%20Resources/6th/Required%20Units/Launching%20the%20Writers%20Notebook.pdf

http://www.ralphfletcher.com/tips.html

http://www.cedu.niu.edu/oep/conferences/SummerLiteracyConference2014/images/BucknerHandouts.pdf

http://www.cedu.niu.edu/oep/conferences/SummerLiteracyConference2014/images/BucknerHandouts.pdf

http://www3.citadel.edu/writingproject/lineberry-handout.pdf

Ideas for writer’s notebook mini- lessons

Habits of Mind of a Writer

http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/d75/literacy/uos/middle/MS_Unit_1.pdf

http://msmcclure.com/?page_id=3937

http://www.ttms.org/PDFs/05%20Writers%20Workshop%20v001%20(Full).pdf

Rubrics

https://literacymethods.wikispaces.com/file/view/WriteNotebkRubric.pdf/84538409/WriteNotebkRubric.pdf

http://www3.citadel.edu/writingproject/lineberry-handout.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5fNnHmFe3p-OGhVdVhVX3JFYlk/view?usp=sharing

ELA Roll-Out Rainy Day Reflection

                                                    Hello Fellow Book Lovers!!

Building our classroom libraries around student interest and choice

      Today was Day 1 of the JCCS ELA Unit-Roll out for Cohort 2. It was a wild and rainy morning for a San Diego that has been dried out for quite some time. We all gathered in a small room at Marina Village. The rain was real, the flies were buzzing, and the AC was pumping (randomly!)... but I think the presence of so many books, the sound of the rain, and all the awesome people made the room feel kinda cozy. Melanie and I dropped supplies off for Maria to start, and then booked it back to the supply room to unbox the needed anchor texts for the training.

Box-cutting skills

    When we arrived back shortly to Marina Village the learning was in full swing. Maria led the group through the organizational style of the units, and the website where are the materials are housed (linked on right-hand side of blog under Resources/Links), and then we talked with our neighbor about the instructional shifts we were noticing, and what we were excited about.  

Maria walking through a unit

 I'm not sure if it was the rain and all the books making me nostalgic, but I really connected to the memoir unit and the essential question: "What can the personal stories of others teach me about myself and the world?" I enjoyed learning that Leilah Kirkendoll likes to roller-skate (I do too, who knew?!), Alison Labastita loves cats, Donald Jackson has a '71 Chevy Malibu Chevelle he's fixing up and that Maria grew up on Kodiak Island! The more we get time to share, and learn together, the more we realize what Maya Angelou often said, "We are more alike than we are unalike!" 

Cohort 2 Folks checking out the website

    I am looking forward to seeing the decorated Readers Notebooks, and the books my colleagues are all  bringing to share out at the "Rock the Book Talk" tomorrow. I am also excited for this year as we all continue our journey to support each other and try out new things. As Shelly Goins said so truthfully in Staff Connections, "Well, sometimes teachers need support too. And it's okay. This is what it means to be a community of learners." 

So True.

Cohort 2 Folks diving in

**Cohort 3 will meet at SCREC on Wednesday, October 7th. **
Pick up your 2 Boxes of Books in the Parking Garage from 7:30-8:30

Tell us about the books you are reading and loving in the comments below!
Have a great day!!