If you enjoy paging through scrapbooks and think that artifacts, photos, and journal entries are helpful tools for learning about a person or experience, you will appreciate today’s idea: notebooking in social studies.
Notebooking can be an effective way to differentiate instruction, as it allows different students to create, collect, and choose different writings, illustrations, printouts, diagrams, vocab lists, and any number of other resources and products to study. Students can use their books as a reference, study guide, and record of their learning experiences. Elizabeth at Fun in Room 4B is using notebooking as her students learn social studies and loves how it not only keeps her students organized but documents their learning. The tool also becomes a nice parent-teacher communication tool; this feature in particular is nice for supporting students with disabilities as learners can share what is being covered in school even if they struggle to explain it in spoken words.
With only a few days left, it might be fun to try notebooking the upcoming election. Students will not only have a place to illustrate their learning, but an artifact to keep to remember one of the first elections that took place in their lifetime.
About Paula Kluth
