A Peek at My Algebra 1 Interactive Notebook

So, this morning I sent out this tweet:

Planned out all my INB pages for the first chap. of Alg1 and Alg2 yesterday. Still need to tackle my classroom management plan and syllabi.
— Sarah (@mathequalslove) August 3, 2012

I was pretty proud of myself for being super productive yesterday.  I had finally got over my perfectionism and started planning actual lessons.  Believe me.  I would have loved to have started this sooner, but I just found out what classes I am teaching this week.  School starts in less than two weeks.

(Oh, and by the way, I guess I should tell the blogging world what I am teaching next year.  I will have 3 sections of Algebra 2, 2 sections of Algebra 1 (1 High School, 1 8th Grade), and 1 section of Math Analysis which is what my school calls College Algebra.)  It's a good thing I love algebra since I will be teaching algebra all day every day!)

I was a little surprised, however, when people started replying to my tweet and wanted to see what I had done.  Maybe my definition of "planned out" and their definition of "planned out" is a little different.  You see, I had an old composition notebook lying around.  It's seriously pretty sad looking.  About 30-40 pages have been ripped out.  Some of the other pages have random math problems solved on them.

On each page, I drew out what I wanted students to have in their notebooks.  And, let me tell you, I am no artist.  My sister is an art education major.  Not me.  There is a definite reason I studied math in college and not art.  So, instead of having cool foldables in my notebook, I have horrible drawings of things that are supposed to look like foldables.

My Very Rough Draft.  Seriously, you do not want me to share this.

Now that I have everything drawn out that I want to include in the notebook (well, only for the first chapter), I feel like I can start planning out more details.  So, I took my rough draft of the first Algebra 1 lesson and tried to turn it into something more visually pleasing to share with the world.  In the process of making this first pair of pages, I realized that I actually want to do the foldable a little differently.  But, this is a good thing.  This is why I am making sample pages like this in the first place.

So, without further ado, I present to you my *still* rough draft of my first INB entry in Algebra 1.

Right Hand Side

And, I know this is so less than perfect.  But, it's also so much more than I had before.  The word "algebraic expression" isn't centered on the Frayer Model at the top.  Totally bugs me.  And, I had a colored pencil accident on the last example.  It totally looks like an equal sign.  And, I'm definitely using a ruler next time I draw a table.  

Left Hand Side with Foldable Closed (See note at bottom for how I want to modify this!)

The idea of Turn Around Words ("Less Than") was totally borrowed from Julie Reulbach and her wonderful I Speak Math blog.

Left Hand Side with Foldable Open

I started drawing the symbols.  But, then I also wanted to show my students the different ways to represent multiplication and division.  So, I'm not sure how my final version will look...  Ideas, anyone?  And, I want my students to do something with the blank space at the bottom of the LHS.  Hmm...

Oh, and if anyone is interested, I posted the template I created for this type of foldable at the bottom of this post!

Close-Up of Frayer Model at Top of Right Hand Side

More Frayer Model (Download Template @ Bottom of Post)

And credit for folding the Frayer Model in half to glue into the INB, goes to Katie @ Middle School Math Madness.  I love her blog!

Changes

Oh, and here is what I want to change.  When I was making my foldable, I got out my colored pencils, and I wanted to use them to make my foldable pretty and colorful.  But, after I finished, my mind kept going back to a tweet I had read about a week ago.  @mgolding who blogs here (and is the one who originally inspired me to try interactive notebooks!) tweeted the following:

@jreulbach Color With a Purpose strikes me as hard to do right. I like"underline unit vocab with yellow" as one CWP.
— Megan Hayes-Golding (@mgolding) July 27, 2012

CWP.  Color With a Purpose.  Did my pretty colors really serve a purpose on the foldable other than to make it pretty?  No. So, how can I use colors to help my students grasp the lesson better?  Next, I made the English/Math table on the RHS.  Next, I started thinking about what if I gave each of the four operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) their own color.  Since I couldn't undo my rainbow of colors on the outside of my sample foldable, I used the colors of the operations on the inside of the foldable.

With each English phrase, I circled / boxed / marked each key word with the color of the operation it corresponded to.  So, when I make my final draft, all my addition words will be one color.  All my subtraction words will be another color, etc.  Then, I also wrote the operation in that same color on the Math side of the table.    

Downloads

My version of the Frayer Model.  I got 6 to fit to a page.  I resized them so they were only 1 inch tall when folded and placed in my interactive notebook.  (Download PDF)

My version of the foldable above.  I think it's called a 4-door shutter fold.  But, I'm too lazy to google it right now.  I originally did one with a full sized piece of paper, but I thought it was a little big for my composition notebook.  So, I downsized it and used the extra space to print another Frayer Model.  I'm seriously obsessed.  I also made a version without the Frayer Model. 

Foldable Template with Frayer Model (PDF)
Foldable Template without Frayer Model (PDF)