Unjournaling the Journal

Earlier this year, many of us had to complete a writing portfolio as a requirement for the Secondary Ed. Program. I was one of the seemingly few who did not choose the research topic of whether or not grammar should be taught in the higher grades, and instead chose the topic of whether or not students should be allowed to choose their own writing topics. The position I took in my paper was that I thought students should be given the opportunity to choose what they write about simply because the assignment would be more meaningful to them. The problem we face in this situation is that the student, in all likelihood, would share personal details about themselves. If the student shares too much information, especially if the topic is a sensitive one, it could place the teacher in the difficult dilemma of what to do with that information. As I did my research, one of the questions that came up for me was, what about the student who doesn’t want to share personal information about themselves, or who just really can’t come up with a good topic on their own? It was in trying to answer these questions when I came across this book.
Now, I really do like this book, at least, the concept of this book. A book filled with nothing but writing prompts is a tool that I think will be invaluable in the classroom. I like the idea of having “safe” (non-personal) prompts to give students, because not all of them will want to divulge that kind of information, especially if the teacher is one who likes to have students read their writing aloud in class. So, as I said, I do like the concept of this book. One problem I have with it is just how juvenile some of the prompts seem to be. According to the authors, these prompts are suitable for both kids and adults but I’m not so sure. Take prompt #7 for example; it asks the student to write a paragraph that contains 20 words with double vowels. Now, this might fly in an 8th grade classroom, but if you tried to have an 11th or 12th grade class do the same assignment you’re going to have a group of bored teenagers rolling their eyes at you! Another problem I found is that some of the prompts are actually rather difficult. Prompt # 86 asks students to write a 3 sentence paragraph using only letters from the first half of the alphabet. Yes, this is trying to get students to be creative in their word choices, but if you have struggling writers in the class, this assignment is going to be nearly impossible to complete.
Having said that, I did find some great prompts that I’m sure I will use in my classroom. Prompt #170, for example, asks the student to write a message for the answering machine of Carlos the poet. This is a fun creative way to introduce a poetry unit to your class. So, yes, I do think I will use this book in my classroom; however, I will also be picking the prompts I use carefully, according to the grade level I’m teaching.