Foldables in Science

I absolutely LOVE teaching with foldables.  I was introduced to them about 5 years ago when I was classroom neighbors with a former elementary teacher.  Once she showed me a foldable and I saw how great it was, I took the idea and ran with it.  Now I use them in almost every chapter!

If you've never used foldables, or don't use them very often, here are some reasons why I frequently use this teaching strategy with my students:

1 - Foldables are great for both my visual and my kinesthetic learners.  Visual because I usually require some sort of drawing/picture/diagram to be on the foldable, and kinesthetic because the students must manipulate the paper as they're writing notes and studying.

2 - Foldables are notes and study tools, all in one!  My students write their class notes right in their foldable, and when it's finished they have a great way to quiz themselves when studying for the chapter test!

3 - Foldables are more interesting and interactive than regular notes.  Just writing notes on a page is prety boring to the majority of students, but when they have to decide which section of a foldable to put the notes in, and when they have to include pictures/diagrams of the concept, suddenly the content is much more engaging!

4 - Foldables help students organize information. Let's face it, many middle school students cannot organize information on a page.  But when they create a foldable to put their information in, it's much easier to organize information by topic.

5 - Foldables can still be used with Interactive Science Notebooks.  This is my first year using ISN's and my students love the fact that we can glue foldables right into the ISN's.  It adds a whole new element to their notebook!

Here's a picture of a foldable that I made with my 7th grade students today.

This one is what we will use to record information about each of the layers of the atmosphere.  As you can see, foldables to me are so much more than just folding a piece of paper!  After we write down information about each of the layers, I give the students a chance to process that information by decorating the front.  The pictures that they use must correlate to what is actually in the atmospheric layer.  So for instance, weather happens in the troposphere (bottom layer) so I drew a cloud in the troposphere.  On the right side of the foldable I have them draw "air particles" to show that air pressure decreases as altitude increases.  So ultimately, even if a student is not much of a reader or studier, just looking at the front of the foldable will give them a lot of the information that they need to know!

Even though my students may sometimes feel like they're in an art or origami class rather than science, and even though I may have convinced my classes last year that I have a degree in paper folding ;), I'd definitely say that this is one of my favorite teaching strategies, and one that I definitely feel yields results!

Rachel