Journal Writing Resources

Journal Writing

Journal writing is a literacy strategy that is essential not because of the autonomy it provides students and the flexibility for application it provides to teachers. Journal writing is rich with opportunities to fostering empathy and understanding while growing a classroom community of diverse learners. Journal writing as a strategy can be effectively used across all grade levels and in multiple settings. Please consider the resources curated for you below on this site.

Click the video link above to learn more about how to channel the creative power of journaling with your students

How Student Journals Can Spark Curiosity and Inspire Creativity in the Classroom

"I have spent most of my life keeping a journal. It is a critical part of the creative process — whether it involves writing a story or helping build a technology platform or sketching out ideas for research. It’s also where I reflect on how things are going and remind myself of what matters. It is a non-stop dance between curiosity and creativity." - John Spencer

Click this link to access Spencer's website to learn five ways you can get the most out of journal writing with your students.

Check out the video link above to learn about how to effectively use peer journaling.

Journal Writing Resources for Secondary Students

"The benefits of students integrating journal writing across the curriculum are amply documented. From a teacher's perspective, there are few activities that can trump journal writing for understanding and supporting the development of student thinking. Journaling turbo-charges curiosity. The legendary Toby Fulwiler, author of The Journal Book, writes, "Without an understanding of who we are, we are not likely to understand fully why we study biology rather than forestry, literature rather than philosophy. In the end, all knowledge is related; the journal helps clarify the relationship." - Todd Finley from Edutopia. Visit this link for journal writing strategies and assessment possibilities for middle and high school students."

Check out the top video link above for a tutorial on how to teach journal writing to our youngest students.

Check out the second video above for a series of creative journal writing prompts you can use with your elementary students.

Journal Writing Resources for Elementary and Early Childhood

"Writing in journals can be a powerful strategy for students to respond to literature, gain writing fluency, dialogue in writing with another student or the teacher, or write in the content areas. While journaling is a form of writing in its own right, students can also freely generate ideas for other types of writing as they journal. Teachers can use literature that takes the form of a journal by reading excerpts and discussing them with students. " - Carole Cox from Reading Rockets website. Visit this link for journal writing strategies, assessment possibilities, and suggestions for differentiating journal writing with your elementary and early childhood students.

Journal Buddies Website Resources

Journal Buddies is an excellent resource for journal writing prompts and resources for students of all ages is journal buddies. Click this link to access the site's homepage.

Check out the video link above for a tutorial from Rachael's website, classroom nook on how to use blogger for student journaling.

Student Blogging: A New Type of Journal Writing

If you are interested in trying out journal writing with your students in a digital format this fall, consider a widely used and free tech tool available to you in your Google suite called Blogger. On her website, Rachael from classroom nook has created a step by step written guide and video for setting up and using a classroom blog for your students to journal. Check out this link to access this resource on her website.

Check out the video link above for learning more about SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and how it can benefit our students.

Socio Emotional Benefits of Journaling

We know that journal writing is beneficial for students' academic growth in both reading and writing, but journal writing also has a multitude of other benefits for our students. Charlie Merrow in his article for Empowering Education writes "Researcher and psychologist James Pennebaker has researched the effects of journaling on mental health as well as physical wellbeing and found that daily journaling may serve as a tool to strengthen the immune system. Pennebaker found that journaling and writing about past stressful events can help individuals work through the experience and reduces the impact of the stressors on ones’ physical health. Further research indicates that journaling also bolsters the analytical and rational parts of the brain.

According to Psych Central (2018), journaling can:

help individuals clarify their thoughts and feelings in an organized way
lead to better self-understanding knowing what makes oneself happy and confident
lead to a reduction in stress by writing about feelings and experiences
assist in problem-solving and aid in resolving disagreements with others"

Click this link to read Charlie's suggestions for using journaling in the classroom in ways that benefit students' mental health and well being.

Click the video link above to learn more about SEL (Social Emotional Learning) from CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning).

Teaching Socio-Emotional Skills with a Journal

"Social and emotional skills are foundational for kids to be successful in and out of the classroom. They involve everything: having a firm grasp of our values, recognizing our strengths and challenges, understanding social situations, developing strong relationships with others, managing our emotions, making responsible decisions, and so much more. Sometimes, as educator we might feel we don’t have time for teaching and practicing these skills in the classroom. Without a doubt, the expectations of educators are higher than ever and sometimes something has to give. With all of that said, social and emotional skills should not be lost. In fact, I would argue that we need to spend MORE of our time in schools highlighting and incorporating these skills throughout the day. When kids are socially and emotionally healthier, they do better academically, too. One way to incorporate and discuss these skills while still working on other academic skills is through writing and journaling." - Kristina Scully from www.thepathway2success.com

Click this link to access Kristina Scully's resources for teaching social emotional skills with a journal.

Click this link to access Kristina Scully's free resources for social emotional learning.

To see how one school implemented gratitude journaling click the link to watch the video above.

Gratitude Journals: A Powerful Tool for Your Classroom

"By exercising the “gratitude muscle” with a journal, students can harness positive thinking to increase their grades, goals, and quality of life. Would you like to improve the culture in your classroom and your life? Try gratitude. Based on my 10 years of teaching experience, this is the most powerful tool that I know. Gratitude has empowered me to teach more effectively, appreciate my individual students, grow in my profession, and enjoy life. Utilizing gratitude, I am able to model one of the most important lessons in life, having a positive attitude, especially about the aspects of life that challenge me." - Owen M. Griffith from Edutopia

To learn more about how to get started in your classroom with gratitude journals click this link to access Griffith's student template and resources.

To learn more about how to effectively teach writing to ESL students, please click the video link above.

ESL Journals: Writing Just For Fun

"How do your ESL students feel about English writing? Perhaps for some, writing is a joyous activity, but many learners associate writing with the academic writing they’ve been required to do in intensive ESL classes or for strict teachers in their homeland. How many of your ESL students come from a background in which they were encouraged to write for fun, just for the pure joy of it—in English or in their native language for that matter? Maybe some, but probably not many. But learning to write for fun in the form of journaling can be amazingly beneficial to language learners. Not only can it accelerate fluency, it can be a tool that brings more self-awareness to the process of learning English. I’d like to expand on these benefits and offer some fun and creative journaling activities that you can incorporate into your classroom or ESL coaching sessions." - Jackie Bolen from ESL Activities

To learn more about the benefits of journal writing as well as strategies and suggestions for using journal writing with ESL students please click this link to Jackie's website.

D6 K5 Grade Digital Writer's Notebook

Click this link to access.

*Please note, that while Kindergarten-2nd grade students have the opportunity to type directly into their digital notebook, it is developmentally appropriate for students at this age to use composition notebooks and pencils in order to build fine motor skills, utilize drawing of pictures to add details, practice handwriting, and to encourage the reciprocity of reading/writing through sounding out the sound of the letter(s) as they are manually forming them on the page.