Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Interactive Math Notebooks

I am still hard at work on my image-based classroom behavior program.  Hopefully it will be done by the end of this week because I am tired of having to work without concrete ideas in hand.  Tonight instead of working on my visual aids I got sucked into the world of blogging and discovered a real treat - interactive math notebooks with...wait for it.....

FOLDABLES!

I am so excited to try this but it is of course another insanely time intensive process.  I already have such a laundry list of TPT things I need to work on plus my lessons for next week.  But still...I think my students would love this and my math is missing some serious structure.  I, like Janaye, love the well thoughout organization of these notebooks.  Her recent posts are from her fourth grade teaching days but she has since moved to first.  I'm hoping her ideas evolve into a notebook for her current kiddos.  Right now my students have such little English skills that I'm worried some parts of this are too much for them.  I think I will let the idea mill around in my brain a bit before I try to see if I will truly tackle this for my class.

Pros:
  • Fun to use
  • Completely engaging
  • Handy year-long plus reference (especially if I loop next year)
  • Better than the insufficient math program I've been given as a resource
  • Easy to differentiate to my class since I'm behind the creation
Cons:
  • Super time consuming to set up
  • Some concepts of student set-up (folding/cutting) difficult with language barrier
  • Lack of supplies (i.e. colored paper, glue)
  • Notebooks in UAE are super tiny so would have to modify things to fit OR purchase 50 notebooks when I visit the USA for Christmas break
  • 50 notebooks are expensive to pack in luggage with rest of teaching resources bringing back
  • Did I mention time consuming???
In the meantime, check out Janaye's blog if you don't know her already at Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes by clicking here.
 

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