3.+What+We're+Seeing+in+the+Field+with+regard+to+Journals+and+Journaling

My CT has her students use their composition books for language activities every day. The students collect their notebooks from the bins each morning and complete the warm-up activity on the board. The activities usually require the students to write down a sentence and make the necessary __#|corrections__. The students also use their notebooks for in-class activities that require them to write about a certain story or poem. I would not classify this type of notebook as a journal because the students have specific prompts and activities that are completed in the notebook. (Samantha Melton)

Although I'm in a social studies classroom, my CT uses what she calls "interactive notebooks" in her class. She treats them like journals, but like Sam the students only write what she tells them. Mostly they are used to do warm-ups from the textbook (generally answering questions about maps), "taking notes" (copying definitions of terms), or pasting in maps the students have colored or labeled. To me this seems like my CT's attempt to use something like a journal in her class, though it's not really a journal. (Stephanie Doss)

My CT uses journals on a daily basis. She has them write their name and date and then the journal __#|number__. They usually will share after they finish as well. She also does journal checks where she will take up the journals and see if they have it all in order. I think that she should response to some of them because it will show the students that you are actually reading them. My teacher says she uses journals to get the higher order of thinking questions in the classroom like the common core wants. (Kelsey Bostic)

My students come in every day and write 10 minutes in their journals. My CT takes them up every few weeks to evaluate how they're writing has grown and evolved since the last time she collected them. They don't have to write about any specific topic so they have a freedom of choice for what to write about. The students usually write personal experiences or create short stories in their journals. (Jade Garrett)

The students in my class do not journal or complete exit slips. They do have a daily intro question on the smartboard that they have to respond to. (Pryscilla)

I have not seen my students write in their journals. I do know that they have journals because the teacher distributed them at the begining of the school. Also my CT does not encourage the students to make entries into their journals. There is not a lot of writing that takes place. The only writing the students mostly do is copying word for word from the book onto paper. I have not yet seen any freewriting or journaling in the class, which is very disappointing to me because I love journal writing. I hope to incorporate journal writing in the spring when I student teach. (Stephanie Snead)