What is Notebooking?
Notebooking is more than taking notes in a notebook.
Notebooking is the routine and practice of using a notebook, in an open-ended way, to chronicle a learning journey.
While traditional notebooks are “closed” activities, with a uniform finished product, notebooking allows students to interact with the content they are studying in a customized, individualized way. Because students are free to journal about the things that intrigue them most about a topic, they spend more time on the parts of the topic that matter to them, and less time on material they already know. Thus, there is more learning, and the learning “sticks.”
Our Notebooking Story
I always used notebooking with my homeschooler when he was younger. The combination of drawing and writing – two of his favorite pasttimes – and the variety of page styles he could choose from made larning fun for him. We studied books, and pirates, and military helicopters, and the Ancient Egyptians, and chemistry – all through notebooking. The work he completed and the knowledge he gained as an elementary and middle school, has stuck with him all these years.
As he grew to be a junior high schooler, I doubted myself, and got trapped in the idea that the “textbook is the thing.” We fell away from notebooking for a couple of years. Maybe not as a result, but certainly at the same time, he became less enamored with his studies.
Halfway through his high school years, our teen has been revisiting his love for writing and drawing. We are going to run with that, and return to notebooking in his high school years!
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Why Notebooking in High School?
I know that my son enjoys writing and enjoys drawing. He can do just about anything with any electronic device you hand him: make music, create amazing artwork, write a persuasive essay about why he should get his license… I want to combine all of these to allow him to learn his high school subjects in the manner that he learns best.
Debra Reed, of Productive Homeschooling, describes the benefits of notebooking at all ages, in her introductory post.
Notebooking instead of a “Report!” ~ our “Ancients of the Americas” Study
I have used notebooking pages each year as a way to help my students and homeschoolers organize their reports. You can pre-enter headings onto the sheets before copying them, if your kids need help organizing information, or leave them open-ended for students to record the information that is most interesting to them. As part of our World History class this year, my homeschooler and my high school students will choose an independent research project on one of the ancient peoples of the Americas. There are many notebooking page sets available for use for this study – follow the links to download your own.
North America
The Mound People (Mississippians)
- Mounds (also here)
- Great Serpent Mound (also here)
- Mammoths (for the animal lovers), including Woolly Mammoths
Other North American Ancients
- Beringia, the Clovis people
Central America
The Olmecs
The Aztecs (and pre-Aztec societies)
- Teotihuacan (pre-Aztec society)
- The Avenue of the Dead
- Teotihuacan Pyramids
- Aztecs
The Zapotecs
The Mayans
South America
The Moche
Other South American Ancients
- The Inca, the Caral Supe (Norte Chico), the Nazca, the Tiwanaku and the Wari
For More Notebooking Help…
For more examples of how you can use notebooking with all ages, see these studies at “A Child’s Garden.”
{This blog is featured in Top 100 Special Education Blogs}
Planting Seeds 
So much information about notebooks and so many use cases… I never thought that a notebook is such a multifunctional thing. Thank you for such informative material.
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