Blog 3: Journal Writing

I can still remember the first journal I had when I was little. It was pink with a cut out heart on the front cover and a small key lock to keep it closed. Even the pages on the inside were tinted pink and had small hearts on the boarder. Even though I did not write a lot, it was a space that I could doodle or make my to-do lists. I loved having a space that I could jot down anything that was in my mind. I feel like every child should have a place that they could write down their thoughts or feelings.

A journal can be used in multiple ways both in and out of the classroom. Tompkins (2008) talks about what are some of the purposes of journal writing within the classroom. She says “Children use journals to record personal experiences, explore reactions and interpretations to books they read and videos they view, and record and analyze information about literature, writing, and social studies and science topics” (Tompkins, 2008, p. 98). She goes on to add that there are multiple different forms: personal journal, dialogue journals, reading journals, learning journals, double entry journals, and simulated journals.

I always loved the idea of having learning journals or creating double entry journals while you are learning. It’s nice for students to have one place where they can jot down what they are learning and what questions they might still have. During my undergrad, I had to do double entry journals with readings that we would do for a class. On one side of the journal we wrote down quotes from the reading that stood out to us as we read and on the other side we would write down why we picked it or what questions we had about it. I loved doing them because it was a fun way for me to interact with the text that I was reading.  

One idea that Tompkins gave that I really like, is the idea of having a different space for each type of journal in the classroom. A personal journal is a space where students might write personal things that they don’t want the rest of the class to know about so those should be placed in a spot where no one can get to and is tempted to read anybody else’s journals. Learning journals are where students are recording what they are learning so those should be stored in a place where it is easy for students to get to. You want to make it so that the students can grab them when they have free time and jot down what they are learning. By having each journal type be a different type of journal or a different color it is easy to know what type of writing the students are doing and where the journal should be placed afterwards.

While I was student teaching, I had a student in my class that would use a dialogue journal to share information with his family about his day. We (all of his teachers) would write little notes about what he learning and how he did during the day in the journal. He would then take it home to his family so that they could read it and respond with any questions or concerns they might have. It was a great way to have an ongoing conversation between his family and school. Tompkins (2008) says that a teacher could easily do that with a student as well. Teachers can write comments in student’s journals while they are reading them to help guide their writing. Students then can write back to their teacher about what they had originally wrote.

When I have my own classroom, I will definitely make sure that my students have sometime each week to have some writing that they can do. Each student will have a journal that they will use when we do free writing. I think that it is important that when I give my students free writing time in their journal, that I am also free writing in my journal. I will then give students time to share out loud anything that they wrote about. I think that it is important to have a have a safe classroom where students will feel comfortable to share what they have been writing about. I will help create this by sharing some ideas that I wrote about.

Example of double-entry journals from level 40. [image] http://homepage.usask.ca/~dul381/common/dejlevel40.html

Gonzalez, J. (2016). How dialogue journals build teacher-student relationships. Cult of pedagogy [blog post] https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/dialogue-journals/

Hompkins, G. (2017). Journal writing every day: Teacher says it really works! [Web page]. https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr144.shtml

Tompkins, G. E.  (2008).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (5^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.