Interavive Notebooks - Take 2

Research Update
Just to see how it would work out and because I had the spare time, I decided to do a second round of Interactive Notebooks with my students. So far, the results have been fairly similar to the first round though with a few less bumps and bruises along the way.

All in all, I think the experiment was a success in one way. These things are a really great way for me to assess who has been doing the work and getting. Before, I could never tell if the students were copying from each other or not. I knew that a lot of them were not really doing the work to the level where they understood it, or even recalled it.

With the Interactive Notebooks, we do two activities every day. These activities are great because I usually structure it that the first activity is something that introduces the material and the second one is where the students get to explore the concept creatively and more in depth. This is not something that is easy to copy or fake.

When the Interactive Notebooks are turned in, I can quickly peruse them and see which students have just done the first activity and given up on the second activity - which says to me that they didn't really understand it and were just copying from the book or another student.

All in all, a success.