I
absolutely love doing journal writing with my students.
I
do journal writing for several reasons.
The
first is because my students and I get to know each other well and it helps us
build a relationship. Students can express their thoughts and opinions without
being interrupted. They enjoy communicating directly with m e and I enjoy
responding to them.
The
second reason I love journal writing with students is because journals provide
insight to me about what students need to learn, either having to do with
grammar, spelling, sentence structure, content organization or other language
arts related concepts. I know from their journals what to base my next writing
lessons on.
The
third reason I like journal writing is because I can see students’ progress as
I flip through the pages of their books. I can see how well they apply my
lessons into their writing. I get a good sense if students have assimilated the
information from my lessons properly or if we need additional practice.
A student's journal from my fifth grade class |
When
I do journal writing with students, these are the guidelines I like to follow:
1 1) Have several topics for students to choose from.
I want for my students to have a lot to write.
When I choose topics, I think it is important to spark the desire to express
themselves and share their thoughts, their opinions or everything they know
about a topic. When I provide only one choice, I cannot be certain to inspire a
student to write about a topic. It is better to provide options.
Topics in all grades should be open ended
questions. With younger students, they can be expected to respond to journal
prompts with complete sentences. With older students like those whom I
currently teach, I expect them to provide explanations, justifications and
details in their writing.
Examples of prompts for journal writing could be:
What can you, a fourth grader, do to make the world a better place?
Why do you
think someone would steal a book from class?
Why should you
be allowed to take the class pet home?
Explain why
winter could be someone’s favorite season.
2) Make expectations clear.
My students know that when I will be reading their
journals, I will be checking their work for correct use of grammar concepts
that we’ve learned, such as possessives and correct use of apostrophes. They
know that I expect students to skip lines to make it easier to read their work
and to edit and revise it. Students know that I expect them to provide
explanations and details in their writing. Students know that I expect them to
check their work.
3) Make time for students to share their journals
with their classmates.
Journal sharing has many benefits. However, I feel
that it is important to agree on guidelines and expectations about respect
before the first journal is shared in the classroom.
Knowing that students might be asked to share
their work with their classmates motivates them to be more careful when
checking their work. They are more likely to catch mistakes before reading
their work aloud. Also, when students read their work out loud, I find that
they are more likely to catch their own mistakes and make the appropriate
corrections to their work.
In my class, when it is time to share our
journals, we sit in a circle to be able to face one another.
When students share their work and hear each other’s comments, they are all more likely to try to make the same improvements to their journals the next time they write.
When students listen to their peers share their
journals in class, they are asked to:
-
Think
of something positive the writer did, such as the way they used a certain
adjectives to describe something.
-
Share
constructive criticism on how the writer can improve to their work. For
example, a classmate could suggest a synonym for a word that was repeated often
in the journal entry.
When students share their work and hear each other’s comments, they are all more likely to try to make the same improvements to their journals the next time they write.
4) Respond to your students’ work appropriately.
If I want students to feel comfortable
pouring their thoughts and hearts out onto their paper, I do not correct their work.
I’ve learned that if students find
their work covered in ink when it is returned to them, they are less likely to
take risks and to write all of their thoughts. They are more likely to stick to
writing what they are sure they can spell correctly and to topics that are
familiar with.
Instead, I choose the
most repeated or important mistake from their writing and model the correct
spelling or use of grammar so that they can then go back and make the
corrections themselves. I use the
information acquired from the journal entry to direct my next lessons.
The words two, chicken and vegetables were misspelled. I made sure to include these words in my response to my student. |
5) Expect students to make improvements to their
work.
I expect my students to go back and
check their work. If I have completed a grammar lesson about the proper use of
possessives, then I will expect my students to go back and check their work.
If
there were some recommendations made by a classmate to improve a journal entry,
I expect all of my students to go back and see if they could make the same
adjustments to improve their writing.
I also expect my students to read my
comments and check their work if they noticed the correct spelling I may have
used for a word they had misspelled in their text.
Note the editing in the journal entry, with inserts and eraser marks, from peer review and noticing ways that the text could be improved and clarified. |
Please share in the comment section below, what you like or dislike about journal writing with students and the ways you use journals to teach your students about writing.
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