"Using journals respects differences among students by inviting each student to write and think in his or her natural 'voice.'"
Journals promote equity of voice among students. They provide a personal space for self-expression and the transfer of ideas from thought to paper. Shared journals can also stimulate collaborative discussion and community conversation around ideas, experiences, and challenges.
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"Journals allow students to experiment with language, thoughts, and reactions."
Beyond providing an opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of content-specific concepts, journal writing provides a space for experimenting with writing and developing fundamental writing skills. Through observations and comparisons between a variety of texts and their own writing, students may develop a metacognitive lens into the quality of their writing.
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"By encouraging students to think in writing, journals can encourage them to make meaning of content as they study it."
Journal writing creates an environment for the types of self-reflective, internal monologues that allow students to process and synthesize information. Through writing, students can learn to see beyond a task or problem to the processes involved in completing and finding solutions to these.
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"Journals can invite students' open-minded "interrogation" of texts and the world."
If a book is a window to the world, journal writing is the vehicle to exploring that world. Journals allow students to ask the questions they may feel intimidated to ask, or challenge the ideas others might shy away from challenging openly. The low-risk, low-stress nature of journaling encourages attitudes and behaviors about learning that students might otherwise never experience.
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