Five Good Reasons to Use Science Notebooks

Tuscon Unified School District implemented the use of notebooks in science classes. Teachers coordinated their efforts and formed study groups that met every other week to learn more effective uses of notebooks in science classes and to share their experiences and strategies they implemented.
During the study groups meetings teachers discovered the benefits of using the notebooks in science classes.  The benefits teachers considered most important were:

-Notebooks proved to be a good tool for students to write about ideas and principles they have observed and learned in the science class.  Students would write about their observations and  introduce questions about subject matter to construct their own understanding.  As they wrote and drew in their notebooks they were interacting more deeply with the subject matter.

-Notebooks provide an insight into student's learning and guide teacher instruction.
In order to communicate certain information teachers included visual representation, graphs, charts, tables and diagrams and taught students how to create these visuals to represent scientific investigation. In that sense notebooks can serve windows into students' thinking to show how students understand certain concepts and what kind of misconceptions they might have.  Then the notebook can serve as a guide to plan further instruction.

While the notebooks in science class helped student develop in writing their understanding of ideas taught in class, they also helped  enhance literacy skills.
Teachers noted that writing frequently in science notebooks helped students feel more comfortable with the writing process. The students language skills have developed, they talked more about science and used academic language.

Notebooks were also useful to provide differentiated learning to all students. Students who did not have strong writing skills were able to use observational drawings and graphs  to indicate their learning.  Teachers often provided individualized feedback on sticky notes next to students writing. As a result the students who were less skilled writers often improved their explanations and descriptions.
Also  higher- level students and English learning students benefited from individualized feedback.
English-learning students  could draw and write in their primary language and as their English language developed they were able to write their explanations in English.

Notebooks fostered teacher collaboration in this school-wide effort.  During study group sessions teachers shared quality student notebooks, shared strategies that helped them how to increase students' understanding of science concepts.

I have to say I was impressed with this strategy to teach science.  I have never experienced something like that.  Yes we did use notebooks in science class, to write down teacher's lectures and draw diagrams and charts. We however did not use it to explain processes and natural phenomena to express our own understanding and learning.  Throughout elementary and high school we had to demonstrate our knowledge either through oral assessment where teacher would call the name of the individual student and ask him/her to talk about certain topic or our knowledge would be tested through written tests.
But the idea to use notebooks in science class to practice students writing skills and develop their language is completely  new to me and opens up my mind to new teaching possibilities in my future classroom.
 I especially like the opportunities that use of notebooks in science class can provide. One of them is opportunity for teachers to guide their further instruction  based on what students know and don't know.  Providing individualized feedback to students in their notebooks seems to be very good tool for improving their writing skills, language expression and learning of the subject.