Using Science Notebooks in Middle School

Many middle school teachers across the United States use student science notebooks as part of their daily classroom instruction. Many others would like to but are not sure exactly how to start. Following his bestselling Using Science Notebooks in Elementary Classrooms, Michael Klentschy now examines how the student science notebook can be an invaluable tool at the middle school level. Strategic sentence starters, discussion starters, graphic organizers, and writing scaffolds are included to create or build on existing knowledge. Numerous examples of student work are provided---even an entire notebook entry for one lesson, from making initial predictions to defending conclusions. A discussion of the needs of English learners is also provided, with specific strategies to increase both language fluency and writing proficiency. Scoring guides and other approaches to giving student feedback are included to both underline the importance of feedback and provide some classroom-tested ways to do it.