I have done interactive math journals for almost 5 years now. I have been tweaking them each year. I have always done a generic table of contents at the beginning and students would fill it out for the first 20 or 30 pages and then just quit. I have been reading Math = Love blog for a few years and she recently changed to these tab type dividers for her journals and I feel in love with them. I highly suggest using them. They keep everything organized and students do not have to write anything but page numbers on them. I also put "I Can" statements on them, so if they want they can see what they are going to learn for each unit.
This first tab is called Resources. I have personalized them to make it fit what I want to put in there. You can download them from Math = Love here.
This first tab is called Resources. I have personalized them to make it fit what I want to put in there. You can download them from Math = Love here.
After the tab, I have these already cut and pre-stapled for students to give them. It saves time and all they have to do is follow along and sign twice on the last two flaps. I found this for FREE on tpt. You will be able to edit as you please. I have thought about making each page a different color, but I'm not sure I care that much about it. Click here to go to tpt to snag the file.
After the Syllabus Flip Book, I have some other information they tape in. I got the other pages either from my own creation (class rules and the calculator), the rest are from here.
The last thing we did in the resources tab is about Growth Mindset. I went through a Prezi I made and had the students answer the questions on the front flap of the foldable. Once they were done, they scored themselves out on the right inside page. They looks at the point system on the left inside page and I had them write out three things they could do to change their mindsets. I also had them fill out a tweet slip the day before we did this activity so they were thinking about it. The tweet slip asks them #intelligenceis (Intelligence is). I collected them and read a few from each class. It was quite interesting what some of the students put what they think it means. I believe I got the idea for the growth mindset lesson from Math = Love along with the downloads. Click here to get the files for the growth mindset files and some other ideas for your classroom decoration.
This concludes my first tab in each classes journal.
I think I will be simplifying this tab a bit next school year. We didn't use much from this tab and it did take an entire class period to tape everything in. I liked my idea for the calculator tutorial, but I never got anything for them to put in there. They definitely need help with them, but I didn't ever find the time to create anything to it. I got as far as getting the calculator we use, but that is it.
I think I will be simplifying this tab a bit next school year. We didn't use much from this tab and it did take an entire class period to tape everything in. I liked my idea for the calculator tutorial, but I never got anything for them to put in there. They definitely need help with them, but I didn't ever find the time to create anything to it. I got as far as getting the calculator we use, but that is it.