Organizing Journals

Organizational of the notebook should be planned right from the outset. Page numbering is a must. A table of contents and an index should be present after grade 3, and might be included a class notebook toward the end of second grade. Not all organizational structures need to be present in individual student notebooks in the primary grades.

Page Numbering

Each page should have a number. These can be applied to the pages, front to back, and referenced in the table of contents as the notebook progresses, or small blocks of pages can be prenumbered (pages 1–5 initially, pages 6–10 later, and so on) at appropriate times in the module.

A parent volunteer could number the pages. If students number them, monitor their work to make sure they don’t skip pages or misnumber them.

Date, Title, and other conditions

Each time students make a new entry, they should record certain information. At the very minimum, they should record the date and a title. More complete documentation

might include the time; day of the week; team members; and if appropriate, weather conditions. When introducing a new condition to students, such as recording the names of team members, it is important to discuss why students are recording the information so that they understand the relevancy.

Some classes start each new entry at the top of the next available page. Others simply leave a modest space and enter the information right before the new entry.

Table of Contents

Students should reserve the first two pages of their notebooks for a table of contents. They will add to it systematically as they proceed through the module. The table of contents can be based on the names of the investigations in the module, the specific activities undertaken, the concepts learned, or some other schema that makes sense to everyone. You could have students make their own titles for the table of contents. This is best done at the end of the investigation part so that students can come up with meaningful titles.

Index

Scientific academic language is important. To assist with acquisition of the scientific vocabulary, students should set up an index at the end of their notebooks. It is not usually possible to enter the words in alphabetical order, since they will be acquired as the module advances. Instead, assign a block of letters to each of several index pages (A–E, F–K, etc.) where students can enter key words. As an alternative, students could use a single page blocked out in 24 squares and assign one or more letters to each square. Students write the new vocabulary word or phrase in the appropriate square and tag it with the number of the page on which the word is defined in the notebook.

Including an index in student or class notebooks notebook is a long-term time investment and can be overwhelming for the beginning notebook user. It may be better to forgo the index and use just a word wall to work with vocabulary initially.