Notebooking Example: Archaeology Page

One of my readers, Rebecca, and I have been emailing back and forth. When she shared two of her son’s pages, I asked if I could post them here for the rest of my readers. I know you will love them as much as I do. And by looking closely at them, we pinpoint some good practices for notebooking.

Rebecca’s son is 10/5th grade and gave his permission to share this notebooking page on the Eight Steps in Archaeology.

My observations:

1. A Simple Page Layout

Rebecca gave her son a very basic layout to guide his narration. Really it is just eight boxes and a heading. But according to her, this structure is helpful for him.

Rebecca said in her email, “He does well when it is a fill in the blank kind of page; this one is the 8 basic steps in archaeology from a book we were reading. More open ended stuff is harder for him, for example: write/draw about this history story you heard.”

This notebooking page is perfect in my opinion. It offers just enough of a framework but it still very open-ended and requires the child to do the thinking. Notebooking is best when the child is creating the bulk of the content on the page.

2. Cartoon Style

The point of this notebooking page is archaeology, not drawing. So the cartoon styled drawings are just fine. In fact, they do a wonderful job of conveying understanding of the eight steps. They are highly detailed and include appropriate captions or thought/speech bubbles.

It is crystal clear that Rebecca’s son understands what the eight steps are.

The little “choo choo” and train on the number 8 are not a big deal, in my opinion. It is okay for children to have a little fun with their notebooking pages, even getting silly. This fun style is natural for children, especially boys. So don’t fight it. Channel it into creative notebooking pages like this one.

I again want to thank Rebecca and her son. I have a math page that he offered which I will share in another blog post.