Purpose

To demonstrate the importance of journal writing for writers.

When? Impact for Young Adolescents

This lesson should be taught during the first week. It is important that adolescent’s have a journal that they can make his or her own. It should be a journal of their choosing and decorated in their own personal taste. Not only does this give adolescents a choice, a journal decorated to their own personal taste might make their writing a little more fun. Students who have never kept a journal have no idea how and why they should use a journal. This mini-lesson shows them how to use a journal and why the journal will help them with their writing practices.

Objectives

NCSCS: 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades

Competency Goal 1: The learner will use language to express individual perspectives through analysis of personal, social, cultural, and historical issues.

1.02 Explore expressive materials that read, heard, and viewed by:

Generating a learning log or journal
Maintaining an annotated lists of works that are read or viewed including personal reactions

NCTE / IRA: 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades

Standard 12: Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g. for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information.)

Materials

Several different types and sizes of notebooks
Suggestion pages to help students get started writing in their journals

Time

25 minutes

Script

How many of you in the class keep a journal? Where did you get it and what does it look like? Do you worry about spelling and grammar? When do you write in the journal? (Hopefully one of your students will have a journal. They will probably respond that they do not care about spelling and grammar, they write when something good or bad happens…etc.) Many authors keep journals in which they record their memories, observations, feelings and story ideas. They write just for them selves about things that are important to them. They do not worry about spelling or whether the writing is good or not. Periodically, writers reread journal their journal entries to look for ideas. Listen to these comments about journal writing from some well-known writers:

Jack Prelutsky writes:

I save all my ideas notebooks-I have at least 50-and when I’m ready to write another book of poems I start working my way through the notebooks…

Ronald Dahl says:

I have had this book ever since I started to write seriously. There are 98 pages in this book… And just about every one of them is filled up on both sides with these so-called story ideas…

Eve Merriam says:

I always have a notebook, always…by my bed. I never travel, even to the post office without a notebook in my hand…I once got caught without a notebook and it was painful for me to have to walk all the way home and do nothing but chant over those couple of words I had [In my head].

From listening to these authors talk about their journals or notebooks, what do they use them for? (Students should answer: To get ideas to write with!) If they need a notebook to get ideas, what do they keep in their notebooks? (Students should answer that they keep the events that happened to them that day or just random observations that they make.) Do you think that these writers would have been as successful as they are without their journals? Why or why not? Why do you think journal writing will be important for you as a writer?

(Display notebooks of various shapes, colors, and sizes on a table and have students come and look at the notebooks. Distribute the suggestions page for students to start their own writing notebooks. Make sure they have a specific due date for when they should have their notebook, because they will be using the notebook throughout the year. In a follow-up activity when students bring their notebooks in to class they can decorate the notebooks to their personal taste. This is just an option. Some students might want to decorate their notebook during their own time.)

There are sometimes that you will not be sure what to write about. However, if you look back through your journal, a story that you have written might spark a topic.

(For writing conferences have children reread their notebooks to find three entries that might make the most interesting stories. Suggest that they tab those pages with sticky notes, and then ask a partner to help find a topic to write about. You should ask questions such as “ I think you may have something interesting here. Can you tell me more about it?” “When you think back to this experience, what else do you remember?” Sometimes you should have students share a passage from their journal with the class if they are so inclined.)

Sources

Dahl, Ronald. Meet the Authors and illustrators. Scholastic, 1991.

Lloyd, Pamela. How Writers Write. Heinemann, 1989

Merriam, Eve. The New Advocate. Summer 1989.

Mini-Lessons for Teaching Writing. Scholastic Professional Books, 1997.