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When we assign student’s work, if we assume they are completely prepared to complete this work without considering their habits of learning, then we are overlooking one of the most important roles a teacher can play concerning holistic education: mentoring students on how to learn.  The IN’s are one of my most effective methods of ensuring holisitic education for my students.  The basic idea is mentoring students through a process of developing organizational and effective methods, in effect making them take ownership of their own learning.  Edutopia wrote a short article about IN’s: Interactive Notebooks: No Special Hardware Required.  In short, there is a daily process students take when learning in my class.  By the time the bell rings, they should be writing down the objectives (written in the form of questions on the board) that will guide the day’s learning.  These written down objectives provide to the students a clear expectation for success this day.  Further, students will usually complete a couple of vocab terms next.  These will be major words in the day’s lesson, so we will begin building the background to the lesson here.  As we take notes on the right hand side, students are to expand and paraphrase the day’s lecture and or lesson.  To the left, they will be assigned practice problems, a class exit activity or so on.  Lastly, students are to keep the lessons organized with a table of contents and all materials/lessons kept in chronological order.  You can see examples of this process below in the picture samples. 

This is a great tool besides helping students to form effective learning habits, but it is serves as a real time view on student progress in the class.  Nine times out of ten, students who keep their IN’s maintained score high on exams, and the same results apply for students who don’t.  For parents, it’s a quick look through the IN to understand their child’s learning progress in my class.