Journals

Journaling is such an important part of learning to write for a purpose. It is also very difficult to do with kindergarteners! Each year, I have struggled with the hows; whens; whats; and whys of journaling with pre-writers. This year, I am just biting the proverbial bullet and doing it.

So this is the journal that I bought. Actually, I bought 20.

It looks like this on the inside...perfect for the drawings and 'writing' of the kinders...

We have only journaled three times this school year. The first time, I wrote part of the entry for every student. It was related to the study that we were doing over The Itsy Bitsy Spider. I wrote "One day, ______ fell from the sky." The instruction was to draw a picture of something crazy falling from the sky and fill in the blank with a word to describe it. Some wrote 'houses,' 'pie,' 'cats,' 'mom;' you get the idea. 

For the last two weeks, we have been using 'Humpty Dumpty' and 'Jack and Jill' in our literacy activities. I had the students tell me how the nursery rhymes were similar. They agreed that all of the characters fell down. I asked them to think of a time that they had fallen down. They were to write a story or draw a picture of a time that they fell down. Were they hurt? Where were they? What caused them to fall? This was one result...

'Jack F. fell on rocks.'
Not to shabby for the 5th week of kindergarten!