The possibilities for using science lapbooks in both the classroom and in homeschooling are endless. Lapbooks, also called foldables, are excellent tools to use with elementary students and lend themselves well to breaking down a topic into smaller parts. Breaking down procedures into steps, life cycles into stages, diagramming and labeling the parts of an object are just a few ways lapbooks can be used with your science curriculum. Here are seven benefits to adding science lapbooks to my lessons.
The benefits of science lapbooks
1. Portfolios of Learning
Lapbooks showcase student work in an organized presentation and serve as a scrapbook of understanding for specific topics. Asking students to write a short response to a prompt or question after a lesson reinforces what they learned. Drawing and labeling diagrams, sequencing steps, and even photos can be placed inside science lapbooks to show the learning.
2. Write To Explain & Summarize
The small mini-books used in lapbooks are ideal for short written responses and teaching students to summarize or explain a specific science or engineering processes or procedure. The smaller pages and mini-books often used in lapbooks are less intimidating for students who struggle with writing longer explanations.
The use of mini books and shaped templates lend themselves well to explaining a process with stages like the butterfly life cycle or plant life cycle.
3. Assessment Tool
Lapbooks can be helpful as alternative assessment tools that allow students to demonstrate their learning in a creative and engaging way. Because they are interactive and hands-on, science lapbooks can be more engaging than traditional assessments.
Plant life cycle lapbook source
4. Alternative to Note-taking
Science lapbooks are another form of reviewing and a great alternative to note-taking. They give students a preorganized format to write, draw, and record important information in a way that allows them to review what they have learned without becoming overwhelmed by how to outline the information.
Lapbooks are good study tools. Recording facts about a topic in a list or step book format highlights key points that students need to be able to recall but break it down into small bites.
Butterfly life cycle lapbook source
5. Encourages Creativity
Creativity and imagination are easily injected into making lapbooks, even for kids who don’t like art or crafts. Students can draw, color, embellish and decorate their lapbooks to show another part of the topic.
Students can easily create their own lapbooks using a file folder or use shaped templates like step books, petal books, and geometric-shaped books. I prefer giving students blank templates to use so there is output from them rather than all the information or content already preprinted on the templates like you find in note booking.
The cutting, gluing, and organizing can help younger students build fine motor skills. Lapbooks can be used across the curriculum and they’re ideal for any subject and grade level.
6. Promotes Organizational Skills
Lapbooks help students logically organize information. We make all of the parts to the lapbooks first. I have students complete the related components after each lesson as a follow-up and store the individual pieces in a Ziploc bag. At the end of the unit, we put it all together and assemble the lapbooks.
For longer projects or units of study, breaking the content into parts and sections over time is helpful for most students but particularly visual learners.
7. Speaking and Presenting
A good way to have kids practice public speaking skills is to have them present their lapbooks to a group, explain the contents, and “teach” what they have learned. I have students in the group each think of a question to ask the presenter about the topic .
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