Notebooking Help

This is our first year homeschooling so we are still working some kinks out. We have been using Noeo biology 2 all year for our science with my kindergartener (he just listens) and then 3rd and 5th graders. I love the content and topics but I am having a hard time figuring how to best implement the notebooking which is entirely what this program is based on. To be fair this is a completely new concept for my girls because I know they never did this in public school. The notebooking pages are very open ended and they have a hard time knowing what to write, how much, etc and it ends up lacking much content. The 5th grader does better than my 3rd grader. I am wondering what the best way is to give them some guidance and help them learn how to write pages that contain more information and direction. I think it’s SO open ended they just don’t know where to start.

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@Lindsay - I have no experience with notebooking, so this may be of no help. I have seen many pictures of student notebooking pages, and they always seem so informative, neat and beyond impressive. However, I feel the parents of those kiddos must have super human teaching qualities, or those students must LOVE writing. My daughter will do anything to get out of writing more than 1-2 sentences, so then I’m left with, like you said, something that takes a LONG time, and doesn’t include much content (granted, my daughter is in second grade.) Soooo - I read on a blog somewhere, that teaching kids to take notes and learn what to write is important, and doing “guided reports” and “guided notes” can be a helpful first start. So here’s what I’ve been doing (again, this may have nothing to do with what you want!) We are studying different famous people. So I came up with a “fill in the blank” biography template. It has basic questions like, “Name:___, Born:, Died:, Place of Birth:” etc, then it has larger sections for questions like, “What was a struggle this person faced?, What did this person accomplish? What were his/her contributions to society?” etc - I usually ask for 3-4 sentences per “large” question. My template is 2 pages long (front/back) - quite a lot of information is put down, but in a less daunting, guided “fill in the blank” format, while still leaving plenty of space for writing sentences. Along with this, there are checkboxes to complete certain tasks like: draw a portrait of the person, use clay to create an artifact for/of this person, write a short letter to this person, etc. When all of the tasks and the biography worksheets are complete, we put them together in a folder. It’s kind of like notebooking, but broken down a bit for the reluctant writer. I’m sure this “guided notebooking” format could be adapted to other science and history topics. I’m sorry if this isn’t what you’re looking for… just an idea. Cheers! :slightly_smiling:

This is exactly what I’m looking for! I need something to guide them. I am seriously considering switching to Apologia next year simply because of their notebooks. This is helpful and I will look into making a generic page maybe they can fill in more :slight_smile:

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Hi Lindsay,
I don’t do much notebooking, more lapbooking. But Debra Reed has some amazing notebooking resources, and help on her website! Maybe it will help you out :slightly_smiling:

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