Unjournaling

I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this book. I was like, “Unjournaling? What in the world could that be?” I was surprised that it was a book full of writing prompts, and I loved it. There are many students and people of all ages who do not like writing, but I think anyone would enjoy responding to a lot of these prompts. The introduction states, “When students write frequently, and about many different topics, they become more comfortable with writing.” I would definitely agree with that statement. When I was given the opportunity to free write in school, I did become more comfortable with my writing because I was able to be creative. The teacher in high school that gave her students the opportunity to free write at the beginning of class always chose personal prompts, and she would collect the journals after a certain number of entries and actually give the journal a grade. Although it was considered “free writing,” it still made students feel uncomfortable because they knew their journals would be read and graded. Although I appreciated the teacher’s efforts in implementing free writing, I wouldn’t necessarily take her approach in my own classroom. I wasn’t sure how I would implement free writing until reading “Unjournaling.” Like the teacher in high school, I thought of starting every class giving the students an opportunity to free write. I knew I didn’t want to give prompts to the students that were personal, but I couldn’t really think of any prompts that weren’t personal. I don’t have to worry about that now since I have this book, and I definitely plan on using it in my classroom. It gives students the opportunity to write about many different topics, and I would only have them share their responses to their peers and me if they wanted to. I don’t agree with grading free writing either. I especially liked the prompts in “Unjournaling” that could go along with certain lessons such as prepositions, adjectives, descriptive verbs, alliteration, and hyperbole. For example, the prompt about descriptive verbs is #48—“King Kong stomped along the street. He crushed cars with his toes. He ripped people from their cars. In five sentences, what else did he do? Use descriptive verbs.” This type of prompt would be a great activity included with lessons on the aforementioned. In addition, I also liked the prompts where you have to create a character in your mind and describe it, like a super hero (#149) or a fairy godmother (#82)…dictionary diving (#189) sounds fun, too! So, most of the prompts would be helpful AND fun to students.