Tossing out an idea based on my classroom's "Journal Jar"

[Audra_Selkowitz]

To give some context for this, let me first tell you about Journal Time in my classroom. Every day we had Journal Time, and the goal was for students to write their answer to the question of the day. They could illustrate it as well, and over the course of the year the requirements for journal grew as students’ capabilities grew.

The question of the day was chosen daily from the “Journal Jar” (even through quarantine, I sent out videos of me pulling questions from the Journal Jar every day). The great thing about the Journal Jar was that anybody could put a question in - I started it of course, but then students would add questions regularly, so would parents, even other teachers.

actual footage from a Journal Question video Spring 2020… from my living room

I LOVED the Journal Jar for many reasons - first off, it gave my kids writing prompts that they cared about. Secondly, it gave us a concrete place to put questions that arose, but were maybe not related to what we were doing at the time, where students could feel confident letting their question go in the moment, because it would be addressed at another time.

You might be wondering where I’m going with this - so hear me out - a “Journal Jar” but for STEM Questions. I know we have all been in situations where students ask us questions, or share their curiosities and wonderings at moments when we can’t really address it - not because it’s a bad question, but just because of what is going on in the moment.

For some students having a burning question that just can’t be answered in the moment is a HUGE distraction, and can affect their ability to focus on the task at hand. Their curiosity is great, and something we want to support - so having a STEM Question Jar like this could be just that support!

You could use STEM Questions as writing prompts, as activities for students who finish building early, as a center-based activity, or as a fun conversational practice at the start or end of a day, week, or Unit! It’s a great way to revisit concepts and learning, to excite students about a topic or Unit you’re about to start, and to get students thinking critically and creatively about STEM concepts.

And once you get in the groove of using the jar, telling a student “That’s a GREAT question for the STEM Question Jar!” can make them feel heard, and gives them a tangible strategy for what to do with their question (so it doesn’t distract them during your lesson).

What do you think? Is this something you’d want to try? I’ll tag @Aimee_DeFoe, @Tina_Dietrich , @Desiree_White-Price and @Danielle_McCoy to get the ball rolling

[Lauren_Harter]

Audra I love this, thank you so much for sharing. I feel like this would have really been a benefit to me when I was in school haha (anyone who knows me knows I ask a lot of questions… I want to know everything about everything).

I did something somewhat similar, but different, when I taught high school Algebra. I would ask my students to think deeply about the concept we learned that day and write about it in a journal. For example, if we covered how to graph linear equations, I would have them think about what this means and write about it.

They could ask questions, try to make up their own equation/graph, draw pictures, find a real-world example and solve it using this new information, etc. As long as they were thinking deeply about the concept, they got full credit. I read each one and responded.

I often think that the face-paced nature of today’s classrooms doesn’t always allow for students to truly think deeply about concepts, or they might think about it more after they process and want to discuss further. This was how I tried to address that. The feedback from students was wonderful. They noted how they felt heard and eventually started to ask more questions about the type of content we were learning. It gave them a tool to learn how to process their thoughts.

Just some ideas from my own experience teaching does anyone else have any experiences/ideas?

[Danielle_McCoy]

This is such a great idea! As a special education teacher, I can always support my students with STEM sentence starters for them to complete and as their abilities increase, they can create their own sentences/questions! Perfect for differentiating and scaffolding!

This idea would also be perfect to go along with our VEX journals and even include some of the discussions questions/prompts that are at the end of each a unit.

How cute would it be to create a 123 bot or GO codebase jar!?!?

[Tina_Dietrich]

@Audra_Selkowitz Love this idea! One of the expectations this year in our district is that every student will write daily in a VEX journal. This would be great way to make it student centered!