Journaling
Table of Contents
Bloom's Level
Use
Setting
Activity
Technology
Related Strategies
Description
Journaling is a tool to help students process their ideas, generate questions, retain new information, and track their progress and goals over time. Journaling offers a safe and accessible space for students to express their thoughts, feelings, and doubts. Student journals offer teachers an assessment tool to help them better understand their students’ perspectives, what they know, what they don’t understand, and how their thoughts and understanding change over time. When journals are shared, they promote classroom community and help students build relationships. Implementing journaling on a regular basis helps students to become more fluent in expressing their ideas in writing and speaking. Journaling is especially beneficial in computer programming because it gives students a place to work through the concepts and challenges that arise during the coding process. Journaling has many benefits and can be used in numerous ways across all disciplines.
When To Use It
As a learning strategy, use journaling when you want students to:
- connect their personal experiences to the concepts they are studying
- express their thoughts about a topic or concept
- work through a problem or challenge by recording ideas and potential solutions
- record notes or definitions of important terms
- brainstorm ideas for a project or solution (e.g. prewriting, pre-programming, ideating, etc.)
- practice free writing or creative writing
- keep track of their learning and goals
- record responses to prompts before sharing them with others
As an instructional strategy, use journaling when you want to:
- provide feedback on student responses in an informal, low-stakes manner
- assess student understanding or gauge student reactions to a concept or issue discussed during class
- provide students an opportunity to share their perspectives and questions
- allow students choice for how they express their ideas (e.g. writing, sketching, concept mapping, etc.)
How To Use It
Advance Prep
Journaling activities can be planned or used ad hoc. When planning for journaling activities, identify an appropriate prompt to which students should respond. Provide specific guidelines, if any, for their response, and communicate expectations for what is appropriate to include in a journal and whether the information will be shared with others.
Students tend to express themselves more freely when they know their journal is a private space or will only be shared with the teacher. Information in student journals should not be shared publicly without the student’s permission, however, teachers should provide opportunities for students to voluntarily share the ideas and questions they have documented in their journals. Reading directly from a journal might also make some students more comfortable with speaking in front of others.
While teachers can assign journaling activities, teachers should also encourage students to use journaling as an independent learning strategy to help them retain information and track their ideas.
Implementation
- Provide a content-related prompt to which students should respond in their journals, or encourage students to use their journals at their discretion to support their learning (e.g., brainstorming, freewriting, creative writing, drawing, note-taking, vocabulary, KWL charts, goals, reactions, questions, ideas, challenges, etc.).
- If appropriate, ask for student volunteers to share their entries for further discussion.
- Periodically review students’ journals to assess their understanding and inform instruction.
Suggestions for computer programming journals to improve coding skills:
- record programming goals and track progress over time
- pre-plan algorithms using pseudocode or flowcharts
- generate ideas for programs
- articulate thoughts and record details to free up mental space (e.g. algorithm steps)
- jot down bugs or problems encountered during programming and possible causes
- record steps and solutions explored during a debugging process
- document and reflect upon lessons learned
- log successes to maintain motivation
Pros
- Helps students to slow down their thinking and process information
- Provides a safe, low-stakes platform for students to express their ideas, thoughts, and questions
- Promotes recall and retention
- Promotes classroom community and relationship building when entries are shared
- Provides a document of learning over time
Cons
- Since journals are not typically graded, students may be less motivated to use them
- Reviewing students’ journal entries can be time consuming
Culturally Responsive Application
Journaling aligns with culturally responsive teaching because it provides a platform for students to share their thoughts, ideas, and unique perspectives in a safe space. Because students can record their ideas in various ways (e.g, writing, drawing, concept mapping, etc.), journaling meets the needs of diverse learners, as they can choose a mode of expression that works best for them. When teachers encourage students to free write in their journals, journaling can be a powerful tool for self-expression and autonomy. Journaling is an effective platform for students to share their voices and perspectives about culturally relevant topics, including socio-political topics related to the content they are studying.
Emerging English Language Support
Decoding is a key skill for learning to read. Students demonstrate greater levels of improvement in reading and spelling when they engage in explicit decoding instruction paired with encoding instruction focused on phoneme-grapheme mapping.
Students with Disabilities Support
The encoding portion of a decoding lesson must make explicit connections between phonemes and graphemes and may include exercises such as writing dictated words and manipulating tools such as letter tiles to form words paired with immediate corrective or reinforcing feedback.
Subjects
All