Student Journals

Classroom Products Warehouse just sent me an e-mail that offered my 10 free math journals with any purchase, and no minimum requirement.  Here is a link to check out these math journals.  If you haven't realized by now, I like to create my own classroom products for next to nothing.  So, I checked out the journals they were offering and decided to see if I could duplicate them.  Here is the result:

I intentionally leave the front cover blank so that students can create their own design.  I do insist that their name is somewhere on the front.

Inside I have lines for journaling and a grid for graphing.  I also like to leave out the axes.  I feel that students should decide if all four quadrants are necessary or if they should only use the first.


So, here's how you make these things.  First print out the journals.  The first 2 pages should be back-to-back, as well as the last two pages.

I printed page numbers at the bottom of each page.  Take the paper with pages 4, 7, 8, and 3 on it and cut it like the photo above.  Make sure to make cuts at the top and bottom.

Take the other paper (pages 2, 5, 6, and 1) and cut a line down the middle like the photo above.

Now, let's go back to the first paper (pages 4, 7, 8, and 3) and hold page 4 like this (4 is inside the roll, 3 is on the outside).

Take the first paper (the one in your hand) and insert it into the second paper.  The second paper should have pages 2 and 5 facing up.

Pull that paper all the way through and there you have it.  Your very own math journal on the cheap.

White Boards and Page Protectors

In my last post I wrote about individual white boards on the cheap and what backgrounds to make.
Here are a few of my favorites, feel free to use these as you wish:


1) Algebra 1 - I did a lesson on Graphing Inequalities recently and the students used these in their page protectors.

2) Trigonometry - Filling in degrees and radians on the unit circle.

3) Trigonometry - Graphing Trig functions.


This post is a work in progress.  I will add more as create them.  Also, feel free to send us links to yours in the comments sections.

Individual White Boards

I LOVE individual white boards.  My students LOVE individual white boards.  But I find them to be expensive and limiting.  This past fall I attended my first NCTM Conference.  While walking through the vendor section, I found flimsy individual white boards and bought them up (30 of them for about $15).  One side was blank and the other side had the coordinate plane on it.  They work wonderfully, but I bought them with my own money.  Plus I bought the markers to go with it (about $10 for 30), which were dried out by the way, and I purchased wash cloths as erasers (about $10 for 30) all with my own money.
I didn't brainstorm this idea long enough.  As I walked around the vendors a little more, I noticed that a few had "boards" where the background could change as I wanted it to.  They are called SmartPals and you can see a picture of them below.

You can insert any background you want.  Perhaps I only want the students to graph in the first quadrant.  Or maybe I want them to fill in a table.  It's great when my students are graphing Trig equations because I can change the step on the axes.  So, this solved my problem on the limitations, but not the price.

There is also a brand called The Communicator Clearboard and you can see these below.  This one is different from the SmartPal in that it only has an opening at the top:

Recently, I was attending a co-teaching conference (more on that later) and at one point the presenter handed each group a disposable plastic plate and a dry erase marker.  Bingo!  The students could use these plates as individual white boards and that solved my financial problem.

But I still didn't have a way to solve BOTH of my problems at the same time.  Then it hit me - PAGE PROTECTORS!!  All I have to do is print out the background that I want and have the students insert them into a page protector and wha-la.  Individual white boards on the cheap and no limitations.

Okay, let's be real.  Let's talk about the drawbacks:
1) It's not easy to get those papers in the page protectors.  Some students will become frustrated.
2) They are flimsy.  The students will have to use 2 hands to hold them up so we can see it.  I suppose that I could insert a thin piece of cardboard to make it more sturdy, but that takes us back to problem #1.
3) I still need to purchase markers when they dry out and wash cloths (and wash them once in a while).

Now it's your turn:
1) What background would you create for these "white boards"?
2) Can you think of anymore drawbacks?
3) Have you tried this?  How did it go?