Growing Writers with Low-Floor, High-Ceiling Journal Prompts

I’ve been re-converted to student journal writing this week. Here are some of the types of responses from 6th and 7th grade language arts students that sparked this reconversion:

• Journal entries articulating very specific, personal fears, complete with illustrative or originating narratives. 
• Journal entries making connections between “The Monsters Due on Maple Street” and various students’ independent reading books, such as Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, Genius: The Game by Leopoldo Gout, and Grenade by Alan Gratz.
• A script of over 3 handwritten pages giving an alternate, peaceful outcome to the climax of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” masterfully imitating Rod Sterling’s style and working out the resolution right down to the aliens’ conversation and narrator’s conclusion.

For one reason and another, I haven’t been using student journal writing regularly this year, but then this week I gave 3 prompts. Some students wrote powerfully and at length to the first prompt: What is something you fear? (Or something that others fear—can be from a book or movie, news, history, or someone you know.) A couple of responses were minimal. Some said they weren’t afraid of anything, and yet no one chose the parenthetical options. The students who had really engaged with the prompt I’m sure spent more time than the required 10-15 minutes. Some of them were students who seem to struggle to get words on the page in other writing situations. I was both thrilled and disappointed in myself that I’d missed this important avenue so far this year, and I wondered how I could help all the students engage to that level. 

I realized I had not clearly articulated and taught the goals of this journal prompt—I’d just thrown it out there. The next day, I made a course correction. I told the students there were 2 goals for this journal prompt: 

1. To practice writing fluency—just putting words on the page for 10-15 minutes.
2. To make connections with the text we are reading as a class—connections to ourselves, to other texts, or to life (history, current events, things studied in other classes, the experiences of people we know). 

Because of #1, if you run out of things to say on your first idea, feel free to try a new idea. For #2, I hadn’t explicitly taught the concept of text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-life connections, and I hadn’t explicitly taught, modeled, and given practice on how to make those connections. Now I’m making a start.

Then I assigned journal prompt #2—since everyone had chosen to write journal #1 on the text-to-self connection, this time they could choose to write on a text-to-text connection or a text-to-life connection. Guess what—better results! No one-sentence responses. A student who ran out of things to say on one topic started on another. And, as a bonus, several students made connections all on their own between their independent reading book and the text we were reading as a whole class!

Finally, journal prompt #3: Write an alternate ending to “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” one that is positive rather than negative. The goals for this journal prompt? 

1. To practice writing fluency. 
2. To identify important points where people could have made different decisions to affect the outcome. 
3. To provide an opportunity to be creative. 

This is place where one student wrote a fantastic script over 3 handwritten pages. Another student did a similar thing with 2 pages. That’s the high ceiling for those with the interest and ability. But even those who protested they weren’t creative listed several different points at which people could have made different decisions and how that might have worked out. Some of the scenarios were more realistic than others—but every student, at some level, was working on the goals I’d articulated for at least 10 minutes. That’s the low floor.  

So overall, what have I learned about student journals?

• Time—sometimes I’ve required length, like 1/2-page, but writing size can vary so much, and middle schoolers can be so literal. An at-home assignment of 10-15 minutes of writing 3 times a week is working well for 6th and 7th graders right now. I’d give the in-class time, but I’m already giving 10 minutes to independent reading, which I don’t want to monitor in any other way than by observation for the time being. And accounting for time, as a teacher, keeps me from just piling on more assignments. It makes it clear that saying yes to some things means saying no to others. It clarifies priorities.  
• Monitor—teacher response, share with a neighbor—this week, to get us started right, I’m responding to every one, though the second 2 I responded to at the same time. Later I may move to every couple of weeks, and ask students to choose and mark with a post-it the one they want a response to.
• Goals—set, communicate, teach what’s needed, monitor, and give feedback.
• Prompts— I prefer using prompts that are connected to class but go beyond, that are as open-ended as possible, and that offer variety over time (creativity, application, evaluation).

And the biggest thing I’ve learned about student journals? They're a great tool. I regret my irregularity using them so far this year. It’s a low-pressure opportunity for increasing the volume of student writing, it gives me important formative feedback on what needs to happen in class, it builds relationships as students make personal connections, and it’s a great low-floor, high-ceiling learning activity for differentiation.

What effective low-floor, high-ceiling reading and writing activities do you do?