Reflection is a necessary component of learning. Through reflective assignments and tasks, students are given opportunities to evaluate their learning and analyze strategies they use while acquiring and applying course material. Reflections also help students assess and think deeply about the information presented in class and thus better retain…

Athletes in all sports and at all levels of performance keep training logs, journals, or team notebooks as one more way to learn extensively about their sport. Such organizing, planning, and reflection can play a pivotal role in an athlete's life. What's more, as communication tools, athletes' writing has the potential to be especially helpful for…

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed…

The use of informal writing is common in sociology. This article presents one model for integrating informal written work with learning goals through a theoretical framework known as concentric thinking. More commonly referred to as "the PTA model" because of the series of cognitive tasks it promotes--prioritization, translation, and analogy…

This descriptive article explores the uses of poetry and journaling exercises as means of helping students develop their self-reflective capacities within the context of international social work. First, self-reflection and its importance to social work practice and education is discussed. Second, the importance of self-reflection in international…

This article explores the beneficial and sometimes unpredictable implications of a daily reflective writing exercise for introductory literature courses: the learning log. Pseudonymous samples of student writing, coupled with instructor commentary, gesture toward ways in which the learning log's continual implementation and modification foster a…

Arizona State University Service Learning students use the Electronic Forum to enhance their Service Learning experience. By requiring 2 entries a week as the writing component of their "ENG 484 Internship"--and counting it as 25% of their grades--students are given structured opportunities to reflect critically on their service…

Discusses uses learning logs for student assessment. Defines learning logs. Discusses structuring the logs; student voices and responses; a map drawing assignment; and using logs for evaluation. (RS)

Describes a summer writing course by presenting a diary embellished with writing exercises, a course guide, a list of writing activities that can be taken as starters, and assessments. Discusses how each participant is asked to create a text about a city which has a considerable visual presence, and to explore stereotypical and mythical versions…

For the 2 years the author was a kindergarten teacher in a public school, the students did journal writing. This was a new initiative in the school, which was performing low and had been placed under "registration review." The idea of journal writing in kindergarten was met with a lot of resistance from the other teachers who felt kindergarten…

Explains how a teacher used Shakespeare plays to engage special needs and at-risk students with whom she had had limited success in engaging in other ways. Describes Shakespeare-related activities such as journal writing, acting, and something the teacher calls "write around," which requires students to visit different stations and write short…

A demonstration writing project involving 97 primary through secondary students with learning disabilities is described. Students developed journals containing ongoing written dialogues with teachers, who also corrected student errors through examples in their own responses. Procedures, integration with writing curriculum, and results of journal…

The reader-response journal has proven useful in the literature-based composition class; it is also useful in the literature survey at the sophomore or junior level of college. Survey courses have a standard protocol that students have come to expect. In these classes, the teacher is an expert who lectures on historical background, trends, and…

Offers guidelines on using student journals and microthemes in writing across the curriculum programs, drawing from the experiences of faculty at Queensborough Community College. Includes sample assignments. (DMM)

The classroom setting is a source for daily and creative writing material for teachers as well as students. Teacher and student writing samples help to illustrate classrooms as cultures-in-the-making in which new rules are invented every day and suggest that stories of classroom life must of necessity end in question marks and untied threads.…