GETTING STARTED WITH JOURNALS
WANT TO SEE YOUR
STUDENTS JOURNALING? Do they need motivation, fresh ideas, or
models to give them a new perspective. First we’ll share
some sources for ideas. Then we’ll discuss motivation.
Lastly, we’ll introduce some models that you can tie into
your unit studies.
English handbooks are
often a good source of journal ideas.. The Beginning Writers
Manual (14.95), p. 100-101, explains briefly how to write a
journal and what to write about. (It also instructs the junior
age + student how to do other types of writing, and provides
spelling and grammar references to assist him or her.) A Daily
Journal (7.95), published by Write Source, provides about 80
ruled blank journal pages with a five-page introduction to
provide motivation, guidelines, and ideas for different kinds of
journals.
The Response Journal (also
7.95), published by Write Source) is similar except its focus is
on a student’s response to what he reads. It promotes
journaling as a method of making contact with ideas in books and
with one’s own thinking. It encourages learning by
increasing interaction with what one reads by writing. If
you’re looking for something better than book reports as a
vehicle for accountability in independent reading, try the ideas
in the Response Journal. These references cover the basics
of form and content. They are all geared for independent use by
students of middle grades and higher, but their ideas can be
adapted for younger ages with parent help.
Do you have a reluctant
writer who finds it difficult to write more than chronologies of
his activities? Try one of these ideas. The first is modeled in
the Amanda paper doll series. This three-volume fictional journal
tells the story of Amanda, a young lady who moves from Tennessee
to Texas in a covered wagon before the Civil War, in Amanda
Goes West (5.95). In Amanda’s New Life (5.95),
Amanda becomes a wife and mother and Texas becomes a state.
In the last book, Amanda’s Home on the Range (6.95), Amanda
talks about the Civil War and her grandchildren. Each journal
entry is related to a paper doll of Amanda or her husband, in
period costume.
How is this a model for an
unmotivated writer? Do girls like clothes? Photograph them when
they wear special clothes for significant activities and events
in their lives (team uniforms, party dresses, etc.) Then have
them make a scrapbook explaining what they do or did in those
clothes. It can become part of family history to be passed to
their children someday. One can use the same idea with boys by
photographing them with favorite possessions, or sports and hobby
paraphernalia.
Journals can also help one
remember things worth telling to far-way relatives and friends in
letters and phone conversations. And they provide a way for a
person to assess his or her personal growth over a period of
time. Indeed, writing itself can be a factor in that growth, for
writing forces us to think more deeply about what we read, hear,
and do than we might otherwise.
Covered Wagon Days from
the Private Journals of Albert Jerome Dickson (9.95) is the
real diary of a 14-year-old boy who left La Cross, Wisconsin in
spring, 1864, for the gold fields of Montana. On this 1,700 mile
trip he did a man’s work driving the second wagon’s
team. He kept detailed notes throughout the wagon trip and also
on the 2,100-mile return trip down the Missouri River by boat.
Note his vocabulary, his attention to detail, his use of precise,
vivid words to describe what he sees:
There before me was the river, silent and
unhurried. Her waters were tinged with amber from the pines and
fenlands of her upper reaches. Grove-clad islands of a haunting
loveliness gave sanctuary to
countless flocks of migrant waterfowl." (p. 27)
Without a camera, could
Dickson have ever remembered the details of his
once-in-a-lifetime experience without writing word pictures?
Another teen boy, Noah
Blake, began a diary in 1805 on his fifteenth birthday. Eric
Sloane found this no-nonsense almanac in an old country house,
added his imaginative reconstruction of the details of daily
life, and produced Diary of an Early American Boy (7.95). Sloane
is very interested in the wooden tools and details of
construction during this era and has illustrated the book with
wonderful sketches that bring the scenery, procedures, and
implements described in the text to life. Anyone who in
interested in how things work (or worked) would appreciate this
book. Fourth graders can probably read it themselves. Younger
children might need help.
Noah Blake’s entries
are short and factual, and he doesn’t waste words writing a
sentence when a phrase will do. Example: "11: Rain. Split
shingle wood for a roof on the new bridge. p. 31. It
is Sloane who fills the reader in:
Few of us today would
think of wood splitting as anything but a tedious chore, but when
one learns to do it well, there is a certain joy involved.
Striking your axe in an exact spot, watching a log divide
miraculously into segments and squares with single blows, or even
learning to stack a simple pile of wood correctly, gives pleasure
to the art of woodsmanship. p. 31
A different journal style
is explored in the fictional That Wild Berries Should Grow (4.99),
by Gloria Whelan. Elsa, a precocious fifth-grade city girl from
Detroit during the Great Depression, is forced by a sudden
illness to spend the summer with her grandparents in a country
cottage beside Lake Huron. At first she is lonely, homesick, and
bored, but she expresses her feelings through poetry in the
decorative notebook her parents had given her as she climbed in
the car to begin her trip. During the course of Elsa’s stay,
she gradually allowed herself to explore and be open to her new
environment. Her changing attitudes are revealed in her poetic
journaling. A sample from the beginning, p.14:
Homesick
under blank
sky,
empty land
around me,
I want the
city
where tall
buildings knock clouds,
lock arms
to keep back
the boring
fields.
Each chapter
of story is introduced by one of these "journal" poems
which sets the mood for what follows.
The prose
moves the plot along and helps us get to know the other
characters in the book, whereas the poems show us Elsa’s own
perceptions. This is a rare and beautiful book, and should not be
missed by any junior-aged girl. The poetry is worth studying for
its own sake.
I wish I had
room to properly review some of the other diaries and journals,
but I can only introduce them in this issue. Some, such as Diary
of a Young Girl (4.99), by Anne Frank, you’re probably
familiar with. Louisa May Alcott revealed the inspiration for her
characters in Her Girlhood Diary (4.95). It can be read by
junior-aged children.
Another book
suitable for younger children is Only Opal: The Diary of a
Young Girl (now out of print). Opal was a
young orphan girl living in Oregon lumber camps at the turn of
the century. She wrote this diary when she was five or six years
old, and this is evident in the language and style. What makes
the book special is its revelation of Opal’s inner life. In
spite of her troubles, Opal recognizes that God is good and life
is full of wonder. The book is adapted by Jane Boulton.
The deepest
of all the diaries is Jim Elliot’s. In Shadow of the
Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (11.00), his
wife Elizabeth makes full use of her husband’s diaries to
expose the roots of what motivates a person at the threshold of
life to commit his very being to a God whom he believed might
call him to an unexpected death at any time. As we know, Jim and
four other missionaries did give their lives as they sought to
reach the Auca Indians in Ecuador for Christ. This book is
definitely for those with adult maturity, but it reveals the
heart and mind of one of God’s heroes.
As you start
this new year or semester, grab some ideas from the references,
get your students writing, and inspire them with models of what
can be accomplished. Help them see that they are making a
valuable contribution to family history and laying a foundation
to better understand themselves as they mature. It is an effort
well worth making!
This is a
reprint from Books, Pens, and People, Issue 2
A publication of Barb's People Builders
© Barbara Radisavljevic, 1997
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