Young Children's Journals

This article takes a different approach to journaling. Instead of a how to create and use a science journal, this articles approach is how to analyze a young student’s science journal. The... See More

This article takes a different approach to journaling. Instead of a how to create and use a science journal, this articles approach is how to analyze a young student’s science journal. The authors learned that the sequence of activities influences how children represent materials in the journals. Using graphic contexts represent how young children show their learning. A chart explains how information presented on a page can be used to analyzing what the writer has learned. There is much more to the article than provided in this review but I find that it is fascinating and more complicated than I would have imagined.

Vygotsky's Theories Applied

Scientific drawing is almost a lost art, but if you notice, many of the most complex scientific questions and theories are best communicated through visual models. Many of the science questi... See More

Scientific drawing is almost a lost art, but if you notice, many of the most complex scientific questions and theories are best communicated through visual models. Many of the science questions on the state exams call for answers based upon a visual, be it a diagram or a drawing. Why not prepare the students in elementary school in creating visual models? This article is well-written and the argument put forth is based on solid research. My only suggestion would be to give the students a word bank and some lessons in how to scale down physical objects. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Facinating

It's amazing what kids will do given a little freedom! In this article, students were given very little direction in what and how to write in their journals as part of an activity. Researc... See More

It's amazing what kids will do given a little freedom! In this article, students were given very little direction in what and how to write in their journals as part of an activity. Researchers then analyzed student work to see how they used the journals and for what purpose. As teachers we need to become scientists ourselves, using data, such as the journals mentioned in this article, to make inferences about our students' understanding. This article give a good model for doing just that.