2. Would you describe the journal activity in more detail?
The journal activity is an ongoing activity throughout the semester. I give students a new journal every week. There are nine pages, of which they are required to fill out one form page, a reading log, and they are required to write about three pages. On each of the pages they are given a group of prompts related to the topic. They are asked to either respond to those prompts or to create their own writing based on that general content area. The three content areas are grammar, reading, and then one section, Yourself, which allows for more reflection. There's an alternate page called Dialogue where I write a letter to the students once a week and ask them if they want to respond to anything that I have written. In addition to those pages there's an extra page following each one of the sections just in case they want to write more. Very often students do. I can get a journal every week of anywhere between two and a half to ten or more pages. I collect the journals every week and I respond to them. On the grammar pages I do correct the grammar, only because students have begged and pleaded with me to and they love it. On the other pages I respond to the content. They get the journal that I've responded to back the following Monday so that they can use that journal to continue in their new one.
