A graduate reading course provided students a hands-on experience in using dialog journals with elementary school children to illustrate the value of integrating writing opportunities into reading programs. Every week of the semester reading methods students read, responded, and returned the journals to the cooperating elementary classes. Only five basic guidelines regarding the nature of responses were followed: being positive and letting the children know they were becoming good readers and writers; encouraging interactions by answering questions and posing questions; modeling correct mechanics; moving the children closer to talk about their reading and writing; and writing responses so that the children could read them easily. Observation and comments in the graduate students' personal journals indicated increased student awareness of the need for similar writing projects in their reading programs as well as improved insights about interests of elementary children and their writing problems. (KEH)