Thinking Out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning

by Lil Brannon

Not to be confused with a daily-planner daybook that organizes time, the student daybook helps organize thoughts-across time, across subject areas. It helps learners build lasting connections between reflection and application, in-school content and out-of-school life, even last week's lesson and this week's. In other words, it's not just a place to jot down ideas, but a place where real learning happens. Thinking Out Loud on Paper helps you understand the power of the student daybook and offers ready-to-use lessons to make the most of it. Fostering deeper, more critical thinking, offering a place to process content and new ideas, and reinforcing the importance of students' own thoughts are just some of the many important reasons to implement the daybook. Thinking Out Loud on Paper goes well beyond rationales to provide ready-to-use lessons that help you get started and succeed, including classroom-tested, research-based daybook strategies Meanwhile, Theory Connection Boxes, broken out by grade level, connect the theory behind student daybooks directly to effective classroom practices specified in the book, while abundant examples from real daybooks show you what kind of results you and your students can achieve. Teach students that their thoughts matter and that their thinking is as important as their responses. Read Thinking Out Loud on Paper and the advice of the many teachers in it who have raised expectations of how deeply kids can learn. You'll soon see the student daybook is an effective way to support your teaching by giving students a space to consider what they've learned in personal, authentic ways that create new, stronger connections than ever.

Genres: Teaching

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2008

Reviews

[Carol Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are books that you read and wonder, "Why didn’t I think of this?" Thinking out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning (Heinemann, 2008) is one of those books. Used in all grades, the daybook is a marvelous way to hook students in all subject areas to "think out loud" through writing. I resonate with the concept since is fits with my own experience as a writer. I remember things better when I write them down and I process my thoughts and experiences by writing about them (as readers of this blog well know!). Now with my own daybook, I have a place to keep my random thoughts and jottings all in one place.

The book is co-authored by five members of the UNC Charlotte Writing Project. As such, each author has contributed his or her experiences with using daybooks personally and in the classroom. The result is an easy-to-read guide on how to implement daybooks. Chapters include how to organize, sustain, and assess the books; as well as the advantages and disadvantages of going digital.

From the introductory chapter, the authors explain their thinking. "Daybooks have helped us foster ways of learning that allow students the space and freedom to be silly and messy, to be thinkers and writers just for the sake of thinking and writing, to be miners of their thoughts even if just to dig out a golden line from something that they read....The daybook breaks down the typical disconnect that occurs in schools: disconnects between theory and practice, between one grade and the next, between one subject and another, and between the way people really learn and how we often feel obligated to make our students learn in very specific and predetermined ways." (p.1, 2)

This book takes the simple, ordinary composition book and elevates it to a position of central importance in the classroom. More than a journal, it not only is a way for students to record random thoughts which they might use in a poem, essay or story; but is also a place to store favorite quotes ("golden lines"), new vocabulary words (which they pick and share with their peers), questions for book discussions, revision strategies, focused quickwrites, maps of complex texts, metawriting musings, as well as "ordinary" writing assignments.

One invaluable aspect of the daybook is how students reflect upon patterns and themes they discover in their own writing. As Karen Haag, one of the authors writes, “A key component of daybooks is self-assessment. By having their thinking in one central place, students can refer back to their ideas through the year. Writers look back over the pages and see progress…I ask my students to reflect on what is happening in their daybooks and document what they see. Students build this reflectiveness over time through daily, weekly, and quarterly assessments. These assessments become as important for growth as the work itself.” (p.85)

Using the daybook concept, teachers are creating creative and inquisitive writers. As a result, these students go into standardized testing with confidence and smiles. “Becoming a writer and feeling the joy of writing is how we spend 99 percent of our time. Only 1 percent of our time is spent on the test—and in that time, we are showing them that they already know everything they need to know.” (p. 46)

To sum it up: “Daybooks make visible students’ thinking and learning.” (p.61)

Now, why didn’t I think of that?

[gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a super-fast read and it had just what I wanted. Info on how to introduce, use, and evaluate day books in the classroom. I tried interactive notebooks last year and it worked ok in my classrooms, but the more expansive, less "fiddle" approach described in this book seem much more my style. This book has lots of practical advice for implementing the Day book approach and it also has some references to academic journals that support this approach should a teacher need to "justify" using such a seemingly chaotic all-purpose writing notebook

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I have been trying to find ways to encourage students to think and to draft their writing. My school is implementing a 1-to-1 initiative and I want to get my students to start blogging; I also have them do daily warm-up freewrites, but I've been frustrated with the lack of thought put into them. With a daybook, students can write their initial freewrites, and then tweak and polish them for publication on the web. I can't wait to implement these in my classroom!

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a helpful book in using writing (particularly what the authors call daybooks) as a way to help students learn and get into writing. I didn't particularly care for the organization of the book--I had to search around stories for what I wanted to get from it, but some sections were very helpful, especially one on creating electronic organizers for notetaking during a writing project.

[Stella Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has lots of great tips for teachers who want to begin having student use active thinking while reading. It offers lots of suggestions for various grade levels and teachers should be able to find something that they can adapt for their own use.

I found lots of things that I plan to put into action during the coming school year.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly useful book in techniques for fostering thinking through writing with plenty of uses across disciplines. This technique can easily serve as an intermediary between the epiphanies of thought transferable to the linear, highly-structured form of formal writing.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent instructional book about how to use Daybooks in your classroom. It gives examples and instructions for elementary teachers through college professors. Easy to understand, real examples of student work and a chapter on assessment. I am starting mine today with my class!

[Sarah]

A really interesting concept that helps students become aware of how they are developing and working as writers, but more importantly thinkers. I like how the authors show the daybook's application in all grade levels. Hoping to try it out in my classroom...

[becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more from this book. Good ideas, but nothing I haven't heard before.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every spring/summer when I look for better ways to utilize the writer's notebook in my classroom, this little book calls my name, and I add mroe of the authors' ideas to my "bag of tricks."