Investigations show that most students just plain forget most of what they have been taught.  They often do not understand well what they do retain. And what they retain and understand, they often do not use actively.  Psychologists speak of the problem of “inert knowledge” knowledge that learners retrieve to answer the quiz question, but that does not contribute to their lives nor provides insights in real, complex situations.

    Keeping this in mind, I want to talk about journals and the concept of exploratory writing. Edward Albee once said, “I write to find out what I am thinking about.”  Exploratory writing is the type of writing I want you to do. It is designed to get you to actively engage with the reading and with the class. It is not for summarizing the readings or for telling me what happened in class.  Instead, it is a chance for you to think about issues, to write about your reactions and observations. The idea is to explore meanings and to find out what you can learn by writing.

      Journal writing provides a chance for you to explore your own thoughts, to wander about on the page, to see what you have to say.  At times, I might assign focused topic to get you thinking about a certain issue. But, I will always leave room for you to explore your thoughts.

    Journal writing can also help you read more reflectively.  Good readers actually are “active readers”. Journals can help this process because they encourage you to think about how you experience and understand and relate to the things you read.  Journal writings will often serve as a basis for class discussion. Journals can let you see sides of your classmates you never saw before and they may see sides of you—depths of thought—that aren’t present in everyday conversation.  

   Your dialogic-reading journal is meant to encourage you to actively engage in a meaningful conversation with the class readings – which you should be reading! – and other course content.  Your journal will be housed in a Google Doc with your newest entry always going on the top.  As you make journal entries, you should regularly re-read your previous pages of notes and comments, noting any new connections. I firmly believe that writing is a way to produce or possess new knowledge as you attempt to do interpretative phrasing.

Purpose of a journal:

• To reflect honestly on our class discussions and material presented.
• To think about what you read in the New York Times and other course readings and how you make sense of it
• To rethink about what you read
• To argue back to authors, your teacher, classmates, and the news.
• To track your curiosity about issues, ideas, and what’s going on in the world
• To document your reading processes, especially as we engage some differences between print-and-digital literacy practices

I asses these journals on a scale of 0-3

0- you didn’t do it. 1) did it, okay or less 2) thoughtful and meets page requirement 3) wow