ISN - Interactive Science Notebook
You will also be spending a lot of time with something called ISN. In our science courses, students keep an interactive science notebook (ISN), where you will document your learning and interact with course content.
On any given day, we could be doing one of the following things in our notebook:
To create your ISN, you will need a quad-ruled composition notebook, not a spiral-bound notebook. I have found the composition notebooks to be much more durable and less likely to have pages lost than the spiral-bound notebooks. This is important because by the end of the year, you will have a homemade study guide.
You will need to decorate the cover of your ISN with a collage of some sort that represents you. I recommend that you cover the front of your notebook with clear packing tape once you have completed the cover to add durability, but also to protect the collage you make.
We will go over how to set up the inside of the ISN in class on the second day of class so be sure you have a composition notebook with you in class so that you can get it set up. You may be able to purchase a composition notebook from me in class (if you would like to do so come talk to me before or after class).
It is important that you keep up with your ISN on a daily basis, since this learning log is the physical representation of your processing of course concepts. We will use this notebook in class on a daily basis to catalog all the learning that you do both inside and outside the classroom, so it is important that you have it with them each day. Below is a few pictures that illustrates two ISN's that I made.
On any given day, we could be doing one of the following things in our notebook:
- Solving practice problems
- Interpreting graphs or diagrams
- Creating graphic organizers or concept maps about biology content
- Writing practice free response questions
To create your ISN, you will need a quad-ruled composition notebook, not a spiral-bound notebook. I have found the composition notebooks to be much more durable and less likely to have pages lost than the spiral-bound notebooks. This is important because by the end of the year, you will have a homemade study guide.
You will need to decorate the cover of your ISN with a collage of some sort that represents you. I recommend that you cover the front of your notebook with clear packing tape once you have completed the cover to add durability, but also to protect the collage you make.
We will go over how to set up the inside of the ISN in class on the second day of class so be sure you have a composition notebook with you in class so that you can get it set up. You may be able to purchase a composition notebook from me in class (if you would like to do so come talk to me before or after class).
It is important that you keep up with your ISN on a daily basis, since this learning log is the physical representation of your processing of course concepts. We will use this notebook in class on a daily basis to catalog all the learning that you do both inside and outside the classroom, so it is important that you have it with them each day. Below is a few pictures that illustrates two ISN's that I made.