Who wants to summarize using foldables???

I love foldables.  They can take the most mundane of material and liven it up so that the kids are meaningfully engaged and learning.  As the year has progressed, I find myself using more and more of these little pieces of paper in my classroom.  My latest craze has been to use them in science.  I find that when I am using them to sum up all of our learning, it helps to create a "one stop shop" for the students to use.  They are able to easily access the information they need, and serves to help them remember just a bit better.

We are studying about Living Systems and how the human body and plants have similar traits.  To begin, we started with the various cells and their functions.  Here was the foldable we used to really sum it all up.  (read all about it here)













To wrap up our journey through the organs of the human body, I had the students create a foldable that included all of the different body systems we have learned about.  They had to not only draw the organs on the front, but then write about them inside.  All of the vocabulary we have learned, the facts, and the functions were described.  Great way to summarize our learning, yet keep the kids interested!

When we moved on to plants,there were a lot of things that we had learned.  Vocabulary, functions, specialized features....the list goes on and on.  To help make a bit more sense of it all, I brought out a foldable to the rescue.  I had the kids create one with a flower on the front.  All parts of the flower were represented.  When opened, the information for each feature was there, with all necessary information!

And finally, instead of just having the students answer the questions in the back of the book, I asked them to use a foldable to do it.  On the front flap, was the basic question.  Inside, the detailed answer.  I think, because it was a foldable and not just a piece of paper, the kids were going above and beyond when it came to the answers....which helped to deepen their learning. 






So there you have it.  Some ways I have found to incorporate foldables into my teaching.  What about you?  Do you use them in your room?  How?