I use science journals in my class and I believe this daily opportunity for students to reflect/write/sketch in a meaningful way really promotes literacy. When my students come in the classroom, they pick up their journals (they NEVER leave the room!) and respond to a journal prompt on the board. I try to use creative prompts (I sometimes make them up on the way to school) such as, "would you rather be a dolphin or an eagle..why?" or "What does water quality mean to you?" or "If a snowflake could talk, what would it say as it falls to Earth?" Sometimes the prompts are very content specific, but they are often open-ended questions to which there are many responses.
I also bring in many news articles from the paper to read and discuss in class. Middle schoolers especially need to know, Why should I care about this?
I love using journals as warm-ups. You can easily reinforce concepts through them. They also give you a good depiction if students understand the topic.
ReplyDeleteI use about one up-to-date article for every unit that I teach. I have found though that students struggle writing summaries, so at the beginning of the year I teach different strategies such as GIST to get them used to writing things in thier own words. For some reason students think that writing summaries mean taking different parts of the article and copying it onto thier own paper is a summary!
ReplyDeleteI, too, use a warm-up. I call mine bellringers but its the same idea. I usually use questions that are revisiting the material we have been covering because it gives me a good lead in to review before starting a new lesson. I also think its a good way for the students to come in and refocus themselves for my class. I check them every Friday to be sure they have completed but also to see exactly what their thoughts were.
ReplyDeleteApril- What is GIST? I'm not familiar with that. I see the same thing in my class with the students not being able to summarize. I would like to use a new technique!