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Folders vs. Journals
Should you provide the students with journals or writing folders that contain loose paper? After kindergarten, I am a strong proponent of folders. That’s not to say that I don’t use any journals: I love dialogue journals, response to literature journals and learning logs. However, during writing time, I prefer students to be working with loose paper. Here’s why:
- The length of a piece of writing should not be dictated by the duration of a writing period or by filling one journal page. Too often I hear kids say, “I’m done” when they’ve reached the bottom of a journal page.
- Good revision techniques include cutting and taping, crossing out, and making substantial additions – all difficult to do when working with a journal.
- Journals are too often perceived as “books.” We tend not to ask students to make major changes to work they’ve recorded in book form.
Many teachers laminate resources: alphabet charts, frequently used word lists, and possible writing topics on the outside of their folders.
Thoughts?
2 Comments
1. Sherry Kerr | November 4th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
We have always used journals in first grade but now have begun to use folders in place of them. We have found that using the loose paper invites them to write more and to realize that a story or idea does not have to be one page and done like they would think when working in their journals.
In a second grade classroom that I work in we use folders and have a laminted copy of the previous years word wall words (or sight words) right in their folders. It has been much easier for them to use as a reference and once the year progresses and we add our second grade word wall words we will add them to our writing folders as well. We feel that this is a way to remind them that they are accountable for spelling certain words correctly at all times.
Using the date stamp has helped tremendously when using loose paper.
2. Kim Terzuolo | November 5th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
First of all, Thank you so much for the wonderful presentation you did at our school and for spending three days with us in High Bridge!
I am a special education teacher with a multi-age, multi-level pull-out replacement program (K-3) for ILA. I have experimented with both folders and journals and folders seems to work better for my students. Each folder has the high frequency sight words included and the students know that they need to learn to spell these words correctly. When it comes time to edit their writing it is more manageable for my young writers and they feel like they can keep on writing and not be restricted to one piece of paper.