JOURNAL DESIGN - Request for feedback

     Michelle Midkiff, a fourth grade teacher at Fredericksburg Academy, came up with some ideas for  Nature Journal design.  You can click here to see a PDF version of Michelle's journal.  For printing, print 2-sided, flip on short side. It will print as a booklet, and you can just add a cover and staple together. If anyone is interested in having it for their files, Michelle will email them a publisher doc so users are able to change whatever they'd like.
     She would also like to get some feedback from the group for the following questions:
  • I am concerned that it is not the correct length. I mean, I left out so very many things I'd like to include: fact sheets, vocabulary, puzzles, etc. But would that make it a workbook and not a journal? 
  • Maybe it should just be a load of blank pages, because this way it's too teacher-led and the students would not have as much ownership of it.
  • Maybe it would be good for a field trip to Crow's Nest, or anywhere outdoors, so the kids have a few guided activities?




Comments

  1. Lisa LewisJuly 22, 2021 at 10:16 AM

    It looks great…. Even if you feel that it is teacher lead, it is leading to nature.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 27, 2021 at 8:33 AM

    I love the idea of putting a leaf to the left side of the page and asking questions about it. This modeling will get them thinking about what they wonder about the leaf.

    ReplyDelete
  3. grmJuly 27, 2021 at 9:02 AM

    This brings up a pretty interesting question about nature journals: how much prompting/directing is needed? Maybe journals could have a beginning section with lots of prompts, information, direction, then each following section would have less of that, till the last few pages are blank.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NATURE JOURNALING IN A FIFTH GRADE CLASSROOM

  Nature Journaling in a Fifth Grade classroom             Earlier this week I was able to visit Amtulnoor Grosser’s 5 th grade classroom at Garrisonville Elementary in Stafford to talk about Nature Journaling.   It was a great visit and I really enjoyed working with her great bunch of fifth graders.   During my visit Amtulnoor and I talked about ways to introduce the topic and how it might fit in as a regular classroom activity.   Based on that discussion and my observations of the class working in the classroom and outside, here are some ideas for using Nature Journaling.     Journaling using more than one notebook. 1.   The small, 3.5 in x 5.5 in, ruled journal - this is a pocket-sized, portable journal that students can carry just about anywhere.   It’s a place for recording quick observation, questions, ideas, and very simple quick sketches. 2.   The larger, 5.5 in x 8.5 in blank page journal – this is the larger journal for drawing/sketching/mapping.   3. The single object car
Read more