I've been bitten!!!  And the kids love these books.  And yes, I teach high school.  High school Seniors to be exact.  We have several new, awesome, teachers at our school this year.  A few of them are using Interactive Notebooks.  I had never heard of them before.  I'm always looking for something new so I immediately started researching this idea.

I did not come up with these ideas myself.  The "numbers important to me", the cover, the spine, and the rubber band, all come from ideas I saw on Pinterest.

Right now we are working on Family of Functions, so far we have just been studying quadratics.  We spend several days learning all the ways to transform a parabola.  Next week we will take what we have learned and apply it to cubics, absolute value, hyperbolas, circles, square roots, linear, etc.

 The next day the teams were given the equation y = (x-2)(x-2).  They were discovering what happens when they changed a.  The INB worksheet followed the questions in the book.  We also talked about the difference between a graph and a sketch.

After spending some time learning what a, h, and k transform a graph, they did a few practice problems.




Then on the right side of their composition book they did a practice problem.

Here is a foldable that I used to review factoring.


 Like many other bloggers that I have been reading I am also finding myself using my INB to create my next lesson.  I didn't start these until about 2 weeks ago and we will finish our first 9 weeks next week.  I almost can't wait for next semester so I can start from the beginning.

Karen Hatch

I have been reading some wonderful blog posts for the last couple of years.  Actually lurking might be a better description.  I'm a little leery about starting my own blog.  Can I stand up to all your awesome blogs?

I've been teaching since 1999 and I always feel like there is more I can learn, better ways to teach.  I have recently been bitten by the Interactive Notebook bug.  I watch my students open up their bookbags or binders and papers go everywhere.  Like a big burp!  I love organization; binders, containers, color coding, thinking outside the box.  So this is right up my alley.

I am also teaching out of a new textbook for our district.  It is my third semester teaching out of College Prep Math, Core Connections Algebra 2.  I really like it but it is a new way of thinking for my students.  They are so use to being spoon-fed, skill-n-drill, that they are resisting talking about math, and forget about organizing their thoughts.  So I feel these books are part of the solution.

But my biggest dilemma is HOMEWORK!  If anyone has a solution for getting kids to do homework then I need to know.  My definition of doing homework is a student's own work and they take the time to check their answers.  If they still don't understand a problem after working the problem and checking their answer then they ask questions in class the next day.  I know Utopia, right?  But a girl can dream.  Their definition of doing homework is slapping some stuff on paper and turning it in.  Or they copy from another classmate.  Don't get me wrong, I have alot of students who actually do their homework.  But I am trying to change the habits of those that don't see the purpose in it.  Any suggestions are gladly accepted.