Here’s What I Do: Feedback Notebooks

December 1st, 2008 By: Diane Trim in Articles, Teachers' Corner

Do you watch the TV show House? It’s the one with the brilliant, but irascible doctor who diagnoses mysterious illnesses. The other doctors on the show play the Watson to his Sherlock.

But, at least, Sherlock was friendly. House is temperamental, opinionated, and sometimes cruel. I think the TV hospital staff hang out with him because it’s in their contracts.

Amanda teaches middle school science in South Carolina. She has a student in class who looks like a Jonas brother, but acts like Dr. House. Like House, he’s brilliant, but condescending. Unlike House, he’s in seventh grade.

Mini-House interrupts Amanda’s class at inopportune times to use her class as a platform for his ideas.

After many mini-House classroom disruptions, Amanda opened one of her desk drawers and gave mini-House a mini-notebook. She invited him to write his ideas, suggestions, and rants in the mini-notebook and return it to her at the end of the week. During her Sunday morning coffee, she reads the notebook and considers his ideas.

Amanda reports that mini-House has been writing so much in his notebook that he needs a bigger one. Other students have requested notebooks, too. Students have stopped blurting out in class and writing in their feedback notebooks instead.

Students aren’t just writing about class; they’re writing about themselves and what’s important to them. One girl wrote Amanda about what she did over the weekend. Another girl, a foster child, is writing about the transition to a new home. A few are thanking Amanda for helping them understand the law of conservation of mass.

“This is nothing I would have ever expected,” Amanda said. “But it has turned out to be useful and fun.”

Update: Amanda says that mini-House has become her favorite student and she no longer daydreams about mini-House and unfortunate dodgeball accidents. She and mini-House have bonded and she wouldn’t trade him for the world. Other teachers in Amanda’s building are trying the notebooks, too, and having great success with them.

Tags: behavior, Classroom Management