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journals
By karen

I start doing journals right on the fist day of school. I divide the class into 2 groups that they remain in for the whole year. While one group does journals, they other works on something different. This way, I can spend
more time with the half doing journals.
I first model for the students, by writing the date, my name and a story. I pick different areas to work on (ie left to right motion, capital letters, high frequency words, questions, etc.) I let the students pick the topic. When they have an idea, they put up their hand, tell me and then go to work.
At the beginning of the year I print their

name in the journal and they copy it. When they bring the journal to read it to me, they must spell their name. When they can do this, I write their name on a name tag and they copy it from there until they can spell both first and last on their own.

I also write down what the child's story is. This teaches them that although they are doing "writing" it is different than adults, and they will learn to read and write as we do.

Hope this all makes sense to you!