Science Notebooks
Science Notebooks
1.Notebooks are Thinking Tools
2. Notebooks Guide Teacher Instruction
3. Notebooks Enhance Literacy Skills
4. Notebooks Support Differentiated Learning
5. Notebooks Foster Teacher Collaboration
5E Learning Cycle
Engage /- Pique students’ curiosity and generate interest
- Determine students’ current understanding
- Invite students to raise their own questions
- Encourage students to compare their ideas with those of others
- Enable teachers to assess what students do or do not understand about the stated outcomes of the lesson
Explore /
- Students interact with materials and ideas through classroom and small-group discussions
- Students consider different ways to solve a problem or frame a question
- Students acquire a common set of experiences so that they can compare results and ideas with their classmates
- Students observe, describe, record, compare, and share their ideas and experiences
- Students express their developing understanding of the content
Explain /
- Students explain concepts and ideas
- Students listen to and compare the explanations of others with their own
- Students become involved in student-to-student discourse in which they explain their thinking to others and debate their ideas
- Students revise their ideas
- Students record their ideas and current understanding
- Students use labels, terminology, and formal language
- Students compare their thinking with what they previously thought
Elaborate /
- Students make conceptual connections between new and former experiences
- Students connect ideas, solve problems, and apply their understanding to a new situation
- Students use scientific terms and descriptions
- Students draw reasonable conclusions from evidence and data
- Students deepen their understanding of concepts and processes
- Students communicate their understanding to others
Evaluate /
- Students demonstrate what they understand
- Students share their current thinking with others
- Students assess their own progress by comparing their current understanding with their prior knowledge
- Students ask questions that take them deeper into a concept
Notebook Prompts for the Engage phase:
- My beginning understandings:
- One thing I already know about ______is…
- What do your senses tell you about ______?
- What do you observe happening when ______?
- One thing I wonder about ….
- I am amazed by…
- I am puzzled by…
- This is similar to…
- One question I have is…
Notebook Prompts for the Explore phase:
- I observed…
- I noticed…
- I used my senses to find out that…
- This is similar to…
- I thought it was interesting that…
- These results make me think…
Diagram
Height
Observations
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Notebook Prompts for the Explain phase:
- I thought it was interesting that…
- Three main ideas I learned today…
- I still wonder…
- At first I thought ______, but now I think ______
- One thing I will remember about today’s lesson is…
- The most important thing to remember is…
- One thing I’m still not sure about is…
- I changed my mind about ______because ______
- Something I haven’t understood before that I understand now is…
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