One of my favorite things I started last year was a science journal. I had tried it before, but it was never consistent, and it was always a flop. This year, a teammate said, “I went to a workshop on science journaling and I’m going to do it!” Things are always more fun with you do them with friends so I jumped on board and off we went.
I know I have talked about them here and there, but I thought it would be helpful to share a little bit more detail about how they worked for us in our classroom.
The kids always bring spiral journals at the beginning of the year with their school supplies. I just used that as their journal. (I also had pre-made some cute science journal labels, but lost an ENTIRE folder filled with created labels at the beginning of the year…BOOOOOO!)
We started by creating a title page. This one is still missing parts. But at least the name made it! Most looked like this still at the end of the year.
We created a Table of Contents, and then left about 3 pages to be able to add on. This was very helpful since at the beginning of the year the students don’t use the lines in the spirals (and that’s not important to me at that time, either.)
We then were ready to begin using our journals! Every time we had a science lesson, we almost always created some sort of flip book to record our learning. At the beginning of the year I had to take a lot of time to teach how to fold and cut. It didn’t take them long to get the hang of it!
Most of the time we would use Flip Books that I created. {Click HERE to check them out!}
Other times we just used manilla paper, post-its, or drew things. It was fun to mix it up a little!
By the end of the year, the journals were pretty thick! One teacher taped a rubber band down the backside of the journal to keep it in place. The kids would just wrap it around to close it, and then unwrap the rubber band to use it! It was fantastic! That was a great idea!!
We stored them in our chair bags, but they would get messed up. Next year I decided I will store them in table tubs, which I purchased from IKEA.
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5 Responses
I want to do math and science journals next year but I really wasn’t sure how to get first graders to “take notes”. Your idea of using foldables is brilliant!!! THANKS!!
Last year I started Science Notebooks, as well, and my students LOVED them!! I love what you are doing with your first graders!! So neat!!
I am looking forward to learning about your science journaling techniques