How Can You Stretch Students' Thinking?
Journaling will be most effective if you take the time to read and comment on what students have written. Ideally, your comments should not be evaluative but rather should engage the student in a thoughtful conversation about the subject matter. For example, you might write something like, "I like your observations about the plants in the class garden very much. Next time, I recommend that you use some drawings to illustrate your ideas. Also, have you considered what would happen if we kept the lights on all night? I'd like to hear your ideas about this..."
To develop their metacognition, encourage students to write about how they learned a concept. Ask questions that encourage students to integrate their learning and evaluate their thinking further.
When Can You Use It?
Reading/English
Have students write about connections they make to an event or a character in a book. They can write about similarities they see between one character and another or between themselves and a character. As they read the book, have students write journal entries. In small groups, students can share an idea they had or a sentence or two from their journals.
Writing
Have students use their journals as a private source of information and ideas for more public forms of writing. Give students a meaningful quote connected to content they are learning, and have them interpret its meaning in writing. For example, give students the following quote by George Washington Carver: "No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it." Have each student reflect on whether or not it reflects his or her own attitude about life.
Math
Journaling in mathematics helps students use more precise mathematical language to express their ideas. It encourages students to reflect on their own knowledge and their own ways to solve problems. For example, teach students the rules for rounding to estimate a product or sum. Have students explain the steps in the process of estimating, and how they will remember the steps. Encourage them to write the explanation so that other students could understand.
Social Studies
Students can use journals in social studies class to make connections, interpret events and actions, record important information, and reflect on their learning. For example, during a unit on the American Revolution have students reflect on how the U.S. founding fathers worked to create the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. How did they come to a consensus? In their journals, have students evaluate the process and explain whether they would use a similar process when working with others.
Science
Journaling in science can help students activate their prior knowledge and make better hypotheses. For example, before beginning a unit on the life cycle, direct students to explain or draw what they know about the life cycle in their journal. Ask volunteers to share this information with the class if they choose to. At the end of the unit, have students write in their journals what they learned about the life cycle.
Lesson Plans
This lesson is meant to model several possible uses of journal writing during instruction. The teacher will use journal writing to activate prior knowledge about forces of nature, teach vocabulary from the text, check student comprehension of important concepts, and have students reflect on their own learning processes.
