Entry 3

Tompkins’ (2008) chapter about journal writing really intrigued me.  Journal writing is one of my favorite types of writing, so reading about various types of journal writing and how to implement these in the classroom was enjoyable for me.  I was especially interested in Tompkins’ (2008) description of dialogue journaling, as it is an activity I utilized in my tutoring sessions last semester for LTED 626.  My tutoring student was a reluctant writer; at first, he would only respond to my prompts with one or two sentences.  I decided to try using a dialogue journal and to format the journal in such a way as to make the journal like “a conversation written down” between my student and myself.  Using this method greatly aided my student in becoming more comfortable with writing.  My goal was not to improve his spelling and grammar so much as to help him become more willing to write by providing positive experiences with writing.  By the end of our tutoring sessions, my student would write at least a paragraph response in his dialogue journal and began to elaborate more in his responses.

One of the most daunting aspects when I consider using dialogue journals in a larger classroom setting is finding the time to read and respond to each student’s journal entries.  Tompkins (2008) has some good suggestions for dealing with time constraints, such as responding on a rotating basis or having classmates journal between one another, rather than between the student and teacher.  I would utilize either of these suggestions if I were to implement this in a larger classroom.  Hopefully students’ journals would be as rich and as successful when used in a larger classroom.  The experience I had using a dialogue journal with my tutoring student has made me a firm believer in the potential benefits of journal writing.  Not only can it help to provide students with a more positive attitude toward writing, but it can also allow students to view writing as a more personal, meaningful activity when they have the ability to decide the topics, content, and style of their entries. 

Another type of journaling that I look forward to using with my future students is double-entry journals.  I like that students can use these journals to record interesting facts or ideas from the text that they are reading and then respond to these ideas in the following column.  Double-entry journals seem to be a good way for students to make connections between the text and their lives.  These connections would help to make the text more meaningful to students.  In addition, students may also make connections between the text and the world at large.  Whether these connections involve social issues, political issues, or other global topics, students’ connections could spark meaningful classroom discussion.  If I were hired to be an English teacher, this form of journaling would be useful for my students to use while reading a text for our class. 

If I have access to computers and the Internet in my future classroom, I would consider having my students create a type of online journal or blog, much like we have for LTED 618.  In this way, students could write and respond to each other’s entries while also utilizing modern technology.  The use of computers may also help to entice students who are reluctant writers, as they could have the option of incorporating images and other features into their online journals.  Overall, I believe that using online journaling would greatly benefit my future students, as long as it is employed appropriately and as long as students are respectful of one another’s thoughts and ideas when responding to journal posts.  In order to ensure this respectful behavior, I would be sure to create a poster that I could hang in my classroom detailing appropriate communication.  In addition, I would monitor students’ comments to make certain that students are responding properly.