I have been considering using math journals or notebooks for my third grade classes, and I have recently had two big pushes in the
write right direction! This summer I was fortunate to attend my local National Writing Project summer institute! It was so beneficial learning from other talented teachers from my area. Our focus for the summer was of course writing, and we spent a good amount of time discussing writing in the content areas. The institute really gave me some good ideas to get started. I saw more great information and ideas for math notebooks at
Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes! When I went back to her blog today, I saw something so exciting! (Probably not to most people, but I
am a teacher!) She is starting a math and science notebooking series on her blog! I can't wait for post number 2! Go by and check it out!
Since these math journals have been on my mind, I had planned to share a free vocabulary printable I created last year for a geometry unit for Blog Hoppin's Free For All Friday yesterday. Well all I could think of after a long day at school was a nap! I'm not doing much better tonight! But anyway, back to my ideas. I plan to divide my math notebooks into three sections - calendar, vocabulary, and journaling. I'm hoping to start them with the start of our second chapter in math this week. You can get a copy of the vocabulary page
here from google docs or from scribd.
Vocabulary Notebook Page
For this vocabulary page I encourage students to write their own definition! I show them examples and we discuss what the word means, but after modeling it a few times I no longer write down my own definition. Then they draw a picture to show what the word means (they could also write an example here). Finally, they use a specific color (I used red last year) to color in the thumbs up, thumbs down, or 2 thumbs down, to show how well they understand what the word means. As we continued through the chapter the kids could add new info about the word that helps them remember what it means. When reviewing for the chapter test, we come back to the vocabulary pages and use a second color (I used blue) to color in the thumb(s) that shows how well they understand the word now. Hopefully some of you can get some use out of this or at least an idea for something you might like to create!
Do any of you have any pointers for the successful use of math notebooks/journals? Don't forget to head over to Blog Hoppin' and check out all of the great posts from the past week!
