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Successful Strategies
for
Writer's Notebooks
and
Journals
The ways that we introduce and structure
writer's notebooks or journals for students at the beginning of the term has
repercussions that echo through the rest of the school year. These resources will
help you choose strategies that best fit the students you teach.
For a great start, School Talk's special issue Writer's
Notebook: A Place to Dream, Wonder, and Explore (E) provides practical
stories of teachers using writer's notebooks in the classroom. Check out the "Priming
the Pump" article (G) in the issue for writing prompts that can be used
at any level. [NOTE TO LORI: This second article is IN the full issue, and
I don't think it makes sense to link to the full thing twice. So there's no
link--and you need to cut this note :) ]
The one question teachers hear most frequently is addressed in the English
Journal article Is
This for a Grade? A Personal Look at Journals (S-C). The author rejects
grading student journals and describes various approaches to journal writing
evaluation. The article highlights the importance of establishing an individualized
student-teacher dialogue in relationship to students' journal entries.
The English Journal article "Working
with a Writer's Notebook" (M-S) offers a close look at how three students
used their writer's notebooks, examining what they thought of their writer's
notebooks, what purposes they used them for, and how their responses changed
over the course of the school year. The article includes notes on the significance
of the teacher's dialogue and involvement in the writer's notebooks.
For specific ideas, consider the following options for journals
and journal entries:
- Include drawing and art.
In "Drawing
to Write" (G) from Voices from the Middle, Linda Rief lists eight
ways teachers can encourage students to use drawing in language arts classrooms,
all of which can be used in journals at any instructional level. In the
ReadWriteThink lesson plan
Doodle
Splash: Using Graphics to Discuss Literature (M), students keep a doodle
journal while reading short stories together or in literature circles.
- Engage families.
Family message journals are a teacher-tested tool for encouraging family
involvement and supporting writing to reflect and to learn. The ReadWriteThink
lesson plan Launching
Family Message Journals (E) demonstrates how to introduce the strategy.
Once the process is underway, two additional ReadWriteThink lessons explore
how to extend the strategy through the school year: Persuasive
Writing: What Can Writing in Family Message Journals Do for Students? (E)
and Family
Message Journals Teach Many Purposes for Writing (E).
- Focus on language.
"Keeping
Language Journals in English Composition" (S-C), from Teaching
English in the Two-Year College, describes a weekly, focused journal
writing assessment in which students note any use of language they find interesting,
puzzling, amusing, or annoying as well as their response to it. The activity
enhances students' awareness of how language is used and where, and can be
used as a bridge to discussions on grammar and usage.
- Explore fictional voices.
In the Voices from the Middle article "Crossing
Cultures with Multi-Voices Journals" (M), eighth graders write
journals from the perspectives of fictional characters they’re reading
about. As they explore the different cultures represented by the characters,
students gain a greater sensitivity to issues of diversity and culture.
- Foreground
students' own language.
Journals can be effective in cultivating formal discourse while respecting
cultural differences. The
Teaching English in the Two-Year College article "Expanding
the Discourse through Journals" explains a strategy in which journals
make up a major part of the writing and the final grade, and, more importantly,
in which students are invited to share details about their own culture and
values in their own language.
NOTE: Free access to journal articles mentioned in this Inbox is provided
for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available
to journal subscribers only. This Inbox Idea was published 02-15-2005.
Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary,
M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, G=General).
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