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Hello,

I am currently involved with a second grade classroom, and I was curious on when a good age is to begin science journals? I want to start a month long unit where the students are writing down observations they see when the snow is hitting the ground and it is slowly turning Winter. What are so fun ways to involve them in learning about winter?

Thank you,

Anne Hargis

Pre Service Teacher

Wartburg College

Hi there! I think it’s never too early to begin using journals. The content and level of complexity will certainly change as the grade level gets higher, but even in the really younger grades I’ve seen teachers use journaling in science. I think second grade would be a great year to dive right into them, you can also incorporate ELA into your journal by having students create chapter titles, headers, bold vocabulary words, etc. Similarly, this year, I tried implementing interactive notebooks in science to help supplement the journal. Unfortunately, our copy machine decided to call it quits a out a month into the school year and our replacement arrived about two months after that. I still use a version of the interactive notebook, but it is not what I was aiming for due to the technical difficulties that arose from not having a copy machine. However, we are able to do our fair share of journaling, annotating, and activities in our notebooks.