Saturday, January 28, 2012

Dialogue Journals and a FREEBIE

One of my amazing co-workers introduced me to both of these ideas for this post, and they are just too good not to share! The first is using a Dialogue Journal to enhance and making writing more meaningful. For this activity I just got those spiral bound notebooks (I used college ruled because they're dirt cheap!) and then took them to get cut in half. Then I tell the students that these are used to have conversations with other students through writing.

The only rules are:
1. No talking
2. You can't write to the same person each time
3. While you're waiting for a response you need to be reading at your seat


We just started these this past week and I'm going to show them to their parents during Parent-Teacher Conferences (next week!). Soon I'll let the students take these home on the weekend to use with family members.

The kiddos have LOVED this so far!


Finally, here's a quick way for the parents to let me know their concerns and questions ahead of their conference time so I can have some materials ready for them (that's for another post!).
Click on the picture below to get your copy!

2 sweet comments:

Unknown said...

What a great idea!!! I will have to try that with my comprhension reading group!

Also- I am about ready to tag you in a post (in about 10 minutes!) Head on over and check it out! ;)

-Danielle

Janae said...

Hey Rachel, I LOVE the dialogue journals! Tell me more about how you do it. How long do you give them, how often do you do it? What if they can't read what the person wrote? And whatever else you think I should know before I start. Thanks! :)

Janae
The Sharpened Pencil