Mr. Rudolph's Science Class: What's With All The Coloring?

When completing assignments in our interactive notebooks there is often a left brain and a right brain component that go hand-in-hand. It is a strategy to help students learn and retain information more easily. Quickly colored pages lacking rhyme or reason are characteristic of students that do not interact with their notebook when they have appropriate time. Instead, they try to quickly color their assignments at the last minute to get stamps for credit(which are not given). This random coloring defeats the intended purpose of meaningful notebook interaction. The goal is connection, not blindly color-coding their work.

Educational research indicates that when we look at words we learn very little, but if we interact with the information, more is retained. Never will I say, "students--your assignment for homework is to color your notebook". The point is to meaningfully interact with the content, make connections to your life, or relate information to material you have encountered previously.

See me at office hours for examples from last year's notebooks.

Some students choose to do such things as: border a page with a formula or equation they need to memorize, or add illustrations to help them connect to a specific piece of information covered in class. Below you will find several examples of ways to interact with your notebook--some involve color, others do not.

Evidence of Notebook Interaction:

-Bordering pages with important facts/details

-Creating a cartoon that reminds you of a classroom example

-Using color/hilighter to group and identify key concepts or
terms

-Adding symbols to written explanations

-Writing a summary on a "flippy" at the bottom of the page (no
coloring involved)

-Writing clarifying questions in the margins (no coloring
involved)

-The list goes on...

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