Dr. Ijezie's STEM Studio
Setting Up Your Interactive Student Notebook
One notebook. Every idea you build this year. Set it up once, correctly, and it becomes the record of your own thinking — not just a place where paper goes to be forgotten.
The right side is what you receive. The left side is what you do with it. You cannot learn something by only receiving it — writing and drawing about new material is what moves it into long-term memory. If your left side is blank, the learning has not happened yet.
The full setup guide
Read it here, or download it and keep it in the front of your notebook. Every step below is in the guide in more detail.
Set it up in five steps
- 1Number every page first. Bottom outer corner. The front of a sheet and the back of that same sheet each get their own number.
- 2Pages 1–4 are your Table of Contents. That is the front and back of the first two sheets. Rule three columns on all four pages. No notes there, ever.
- 3Skip page 5. Leave it completely blank. It is the buffer — if the Table of Contents overflows, it continues there.
- 4Your notebook starts on page 6. Every entry gets logged in the Table of Contents the moment you start it, not at the end of the week.
- 5Work the two-page system from then on — right side in, left side out. See below.
What the Table of Contents looks like
Three columns, ruled on every one of pages 1 through 4, in exactly this order.
| Date | Assignment Name | Page Number |
|---|---|---|
| 8/25 | Do Now: Angle Pairs | 6 |
| 8/25 | My diagram + summary | 7 |
| 8/26 | Guided Notes: Parallel Lines | 8 |
| 8/26 | Concept map + my questions | 9 |
The two-page system
Whenever the notebook is open flat you see two pages. They have two different jobs, and they are never interchangeable.
Teacher input
The record of what happened in class.
- Do Nows
- Graphic organizers
- Guided notes
- Vocabulary and definitions
- Worked examples modelled by the teacher
- Foldables and handouts glued in
- Theorems, formulas and anchor charts
Scholar processing
Never blank, and never a copy of the right side.
- Drawings and diagrams you make yourself
- A summary in your own words
- A concept map or colour-coding
- A mnemonic you invented
- Your own worked example with different numbers
- A “where I got stuck” note
- Questions you still have, and what changed in your thinking
Notebook rules
- Date every entry.
- Log it in the Table of Contents immediately.
- Glue handouts in. Never staple, never leave loose pages.
- The notebook stays in the classroom unless you are told otherwise.
- If you are absent, get the page numbers from a classmate and catch up the left side yourself.
How it is checked: completeness of the left side, an accurate Table of Contents, and dated entries — not neatness of handwriting.