Bit & Rudder

Homeschool Writing Made Easy

Journal

How to Teach Writing to Middle School and High School Students: Step 1—Structured Journals

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#1 How to Teach Writing to Middle School and High School Students: Step 1—Structured Journals

This strategy helps students practice writing without the fear of failure.

Confession: I avoided teaching my kids to write for years because I was so overwhelmed with the process. Oh sure, I had a curriculum, more than one even, and every year I promised myself that this was the year we were going to write. Usually, though, we didn’t make it past lesson 3 because it was too confusing, time-consuming, daunting, difficult. You get the idea!

If this sounds familiar, then you may find that this episode gives you exactly what you need to break through the confusion and prioritize writing this year.

Because let’s be honest, teaching writing can be tricky—there are A LOT of moving parts. If you don’t have an easy-to-use plan, it’s hard to keep moving forward.

In this episode, you will learn

  • a plan for writing so easy that you can start it today
  • a strategy that will get your child in the habit of writing
  • a way to help your child become a more confident writer
  • a nearly effortless way to get you—the parent/teacher—in the habit of assigning and grading writing

If this sounds too good to be true, I can assure you I have seen the results first hand, with my own children and in English classes I’ve taught. 

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The tool at the center of these great results is a structured journal. The “structured” part of that is very important as I explain in the episode, because journal-keeping without clear guidelines can be a big waste of time.

But I’ve got you covered with exact guidelines for assigning journals, plus all the prompts you need and instructions on how to grade student entries. It’s all laid out in this episode, but I’ve also created a FREE Journal Writing Guide with all the information you need to get started.

So if you’re ready, it’s time to learn all about how to set up your writing classroom.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Journal Writing Planhttps://marvelous-artist-7428.ck.page/713dbe727c

https://marvelous-artist-7428.ck.page/713dbe727c

Journal Buddieshttps://www.journalbuddies.com/

https://www.journalbuddies.com/

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Student Writing Projects for COVID-19

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Student Writing Projects for the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020

What’s your favorite time period to study?  For me, it’s Colonial America.  I love reading about John Smith and Pocahontas, the voyage of the Mayflower, and the founding of the thirteen colonies.  Right now, we are living in historic times.  The young people of today will likely be telling their children and grandchildren about the great pandemic of 2020.  The statistics about coronavirus, such as how many people were infected or how many people died, will tell only part of the story.  The rest of the story—the heart and soul of it—will come from the ordinary people whose lives were upended as the world closed down.  That’s most of us.

What a shame it would be for kids to miss the opportunity to preserve a slice of history for themselves and for posterity.  This guide offers a simple roadmap for doing just that.  But more than that, it provides a place for students to explore their thoughts and feelings about this disruptive experience.  Writing about difficult and confusing matters often results in clarity and even consolation.  I hope that will be the result for every student who embarks on this project. 

For parents (and teachers) who want their kids to practice writing, this guide offers a broad range of structured assignments with specific instructions for each one.  There are nine projects total, and except for the last one, can be done in any order.  Project 9 is designed to be completed once the COVID-19 crisis has ended. 

Here is a quick look at the projects:

Project 1:  Before and After (compare/contrast)

Project 2:  Big Picture (summary)

Project 3:  A Day in the Life (narrative)

Project 4:  How Are You Feeling? (analysis)

Project 5:  Buzzwords (definition)

Project 6:  Comic Relief (research/expository)

Project 7:  Government Response (advanced—research/persuasive)

Project 8:  Journal Entries (variety)

Project 9:  A Retrospective (revision/analysis)

Here is an example of one of the projects from the guide. This is the assignment my students are working on this week.

Project 1:  Before and After

Instructions:  Write about three things that changed in your life (or the life of your family) once COVID-19 became a serious concern.  Make sure you explain what life was like before each of these changes occurred.  For example, before COVID-19 most college students attended lectures on campus, but now they have to view teaching online. 

Length:  At least three paragraphs

Quick Process

Prewriting: Brainstorm a list of all your activities.  Consider school, church, extracurricular, volunteer, work, and social activities.

Drafting: Discuss each point in a separate paragraph.  Remember to describe what the activity was like before the change.  Give at least two details about each change.  Here is an example that adds details about college classes being online:

College campuses have closed down so all classes are online.  Some professors are pre-recording their lectures, while others are having class in real time using an online video service such as Zoom.  Science courses with a lab component pose a particular challenge, and professors are scrambling to figure out ways to make credit-worthy online versions. 

The PDF download contains all the projects. It’s free, and you can print out as many copies as you need and get your kids writing today.

Student writing projects for COVID-19

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Basic (Journal) Writing Plan

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Basic (Journal) Writing Plan

journal writing plan

Goal

To help students develop a habit of writing 

This plan is ideal for

  • students who have no experience or limited experience with writing
  • students who dislike writing, especially those who are uncertain or afraid to write
  • experienced writers who are looking for a less structured environment to hone their skills

Duration

4 weeks

Supplies

A notebook, composition book, or binder/folder with notebook paper; a pen

Frequency

3 times a week (the schedule is flexible—three days in a row, every other day, etc.; however, it is better to write on three different days rather than do multiple entries on the same day)

Directions

Tell students they will be writing journal entries for the next 4 weeks.  They should

  • Write each entry on a separate page.
  • Put the date at the top of each entry.
  • Make each entry at least 100 words.  (There is no maximum.)
  • Write at least three entries each week.
  • Choose their own topic to write about or select one of the writing prompts as their topic.  At least one entry each week should be based on one of the prompts. 

Assessment

Inform students that you will not be reading their journals unless they want you to read them.  (Please honor that agreement.)  However, you should also let them know that you will be checking the journal entries for completion and that you may ask them to summarize their entries (out loud) or read a sentence or two (out loud).  You might even count the words if their entries seem short!  Checking the journals each week only takes a minute and provides valuable accountability for your students.  Remember, the goal is to get them in the habit of writing, and you can help them build this habit by regularly checking on their progress. 

Journal Prompts

The prompts are organized to promote different kinds of writing: 

Week 1: Descriptive

Week 2: Narrative

Week 3: Expository

Week 4: Persuasive

Writing Prompts for Week 1

  • Describe your favorite vacation spot.
  • Describe your grandpa or another relative.
  • Describe an interesting insect or reptile.

Writing Prompts for Week 2

  • Discuss an interesting story from your parent’s childhood. 
  • Retell your favorite fairytale or Bible story.
  • Tell about a day in the life of your pet (real or imagined!).

Writing Prompts for Week 3

  • A book worth reading is ____________.  Explain.
  • Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer and why?
  • A job I would NOT want to have is __________.  Explain why.

Writing Prompts for Week 4

  • Is procrastination ever a good thing?  Discuss positives and negatives.
  • Do you consider yourself an optimist (someone who sees the glass as half full) or a pessimist (someone who sees the glass as half empty)?  Give evidence. 
  • Do you think it is important to make your bed every day?  Why or why not?

Next Steps

After a month or two of journal writing, consider adding a longer weekly writing assignment that you will direct, read, and evaluate.  For help with this, see my Basic PLUS Writing Plan.

Continue to assign journal writing but reduce the number of weekly entries.  I have my students do journal writing year round, but they are only required to submit two entries each week.  Many students find that they enjoy journal writing after they get into the habit of it—in fact, some of them write more than they are required to do. 

For more discussion of journal writing, see my article.

pdf download of basic (Journal) writing Plan

If you enjoyed this article, please let me know by leaving a comment. Also, would you consider subscribing to the newsletter I publish each week. Each issue contains one quote, one tip or strategy, one resource, and one journal prompt. But not one wasted second! It’s my way of offering a little bit of encouragement and direction each week. Because we all need that!

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Student Journals: Easy and Effective

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This Idea Will Have Students Writing in No Time

                When one of the moms in my co-op suggested that I require students to keep a journal this year, I was a little hesitant.  I remembered my own experience with journal writing in high school.  It was in a creative writing class, where we were supposed to make regular entries in a journal that was collected several times throughout the semester.  The guidelines were vague—no set number of entries, choose your own topics.  I think the freedom was supposed to inspire creativity, but for me it had the opposite effect. 

It resulted in paralysis, with me barely writing anything until a few days before the dreaded due date.  Then, in a frenzied panic, I would scribble furiously whatever random thoughts came to mind.  Stream-of-consciousness, after all, is a form of creativity!  At least that’s how I justified the awful prose and ridiculous verse that comprised these entries.  I’m sure my teacher wasn’t fooled for one minute by various colors of ink I used or my attempts to modify my handwriting from entry to entry so they looked like they’d been written on different days instead of in one midnight rush.  So my own experience with journal writing, to say the least, was not very successful!

                However, since then, I’ve discovered that it is possible for journal writing to be an extremely effective tool, especially for students who struggle with writing.  BUT it has to be set up with clear boundaries and guidelines.  Journals can be powerful tools—they provide students with the opportunity to practice writing frequently in a low-pressure environment.  And as we all know, practice leads to improvement.

Journal writing in my classroom

                So let me share with you how I implemented journal writing in my class this year.  I’ll give you the rundown on what worked really well, and I’ll also fill you in on what went wrong, and what I’ll do differently next time.

                Let me start by describing my class to you.  I have five students, ranging in age from 5th to 9th grade.  (Two of these are my own kids.)  We meet once a week for 45 minutes.  The rest of the time, students are working independently to complete the assignments that are due in class. 

                At the beginning of the school year, I established these requirements for journals:

  • A separate notebook for the sole purpose of journaling
  • 2 entries per week
  • Minimum of 100 words per entry (but no maximum length)
  • A date and title for each entry

I then informed the class that I would be checking their journals for completion each week, although not actually reading the entries.

Finally, I told them that they could write about whatever they wanted to, OR they could choose one of the prompts from the list I handed them and write about that.  This was my way of addressing the real difficulty of not knowing what to write about, which always comes up and is a legitimate concern. 

The list of prompts I gave them was compiled from the huge list I found on a website called Journal Buddies.  This is a great resource that has thousands of prompts for all different ages.  I culled through the lists I found there and selected the prompts I thought were suitable for my group.  There were about 60 different prompts on the list I handed them, which I decided was more than enough to get them started.  We read through the list together so they could get a sense of the possibilities.  Overall, students were positive about the prospect of keeping a journal and seemed confident that they would be able to complete the task. 

                When the next class meeting rolled around, the first thing I did was have students pull out their journals, and then I dutifully went around and checked to see that everyone had two entries which met the requirements.  I did have to warn at least one student that showing up with an incomplete journal was unacceptable.  That was the last time for a while that people came to class unprepared.  However, as the year wore on and I became less vigilant about checking for entries, some students started skipping the assignment occasionally. 

                After I checked to make sure journal entries were complete, I asked for volunteers to read one of their entries.  I was pleasantly surprised that almost everyone wanted to share, and some students even wanted to read both of their entries.  The class also enjoyed listening to one other.  If someone didn’t volunteer to read, I asked them to give me a one-sentence summary of their topics.  For example, a student might say, I wrote about my dog and the fight I had with my brother. 

                This enthusiasm for sharing entries lasted about a month, and then gradually people stopped volunteering.  When I asked why they didn’t want to share, students said they couldn’t think of anything very good to write about. 

                But what about all those prompts I gave you, I asked beseechingly.  The answer I usually got was something along the lines of I didn’t like any of those prompts or those prompts weren’t very good.  For a while, I was willing to blame their lack of inspiration on the poor prompts too.

                But when I finally got around to re-examining the prompts, I realized that there was nothing wrong with them.  In fact, they were great prompts.  The real problem, I concluded after mulling it over a while, was that I had given students too many prompts from which to choose.  Most students were unwilling to read through a long list of prompts to figure out what they wanted to write about.  My son, Aaron, for example, who has a policy of not reading even one extra word that he doesn’t have to, of course was not going to read through this mega-long list.  So he was paralyzed right from the start.  And even the students who were willing to read the list found themselves crippled by too many choices.  The problem of what to write about had not been solved after all.

                So one week after a particularly lackluster showing of journal entries, I announced to the class that I was assigning the topics for the next week.  I picked two prompts from the list that I thought would be inspirational.  I was not disappointed.  The following week, I had plenty of volunteers wanting to share their entries.  The key had been to limit the options. 

Improving the plan

                Overall, journal writing turned out to be a great idea, and I definitely will be assigning journals again next year, but I do plan to make several changes based on what I learned.  Here are some of the highlights of my new plan:

  1. This is a small change, but I will not require titles for entries, but instead have students put the number of the entry alongside the date.  The titles became too burdensome for most students.
  2. I think that two entries per week is a good number, so I’m going to stick with that.  Also, setting the minimum length at 100 words per entry seemed to work well.
  3. I’m going to do a better job of monitoring my own children so they work on their journals throughout the week rather than doing both entries at the same time the day before class.  Spreading it out will go further in helping them develop a habit of writing, and it is likely to improve the quality of writing as well.  I’m going to suggest that the moms of my other students do the same, if possible.
  4. I’m going to stay vigilant about checking journals each week to create more accountability.
  5. The biggest change I will make has to do with the journal prompts.  Instead of giving the class a huge list at the beginning of the year, I will give them 3 prompts each week.  One of their entries must be in response to one of the prompts.  The other entry can also be in response to a prompt, or they can write about a topic of their own choosing.  This solves the problem of what to write about plus allows students to generate their own topics if they so desire.  In addition to Journal Buddies, the Daily Teaching Tools website is also a good resource for journal prompts.  It has a robust list of 180 prompts for each day of the school year.

Finally, you may be wondering if it is possible to use this method of journal writing if you have just one student.  Absolutely!  You only need to make a couple of adjustments.  First, I think it is a good policy to check journal entries only for completion rather than reading the entries.  This allows students to write freely without fear of the teacher’s red pen or of their privacy being violated.  At the end of the week, ask your child if she wants to share one or both of her entries.  If so, she can then read the entry to you.  If not, ask her for a sentence summary.  Inform your student that at the end of each month, she will be required to select her favorite entry to read aloud to you.  If she is already sharing her entries regularly, you can skip this.  Otherwise, it is a good way to make sure the student is making sufficient effort to complete the journal assignments. 

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