Dialogue journals have long been used in education. “Reflective journals,” “learning diaries,” and “journaling” are other names for the same great idea. In their dialog journals, students can write on such topics as:

• something they learned.
• something they have difficulty with.
• how they feel about their classes.
• what they did on the weekend.
• whatever is on their minds.

Each piece of writing students do is called a journal entry. Entries can be done in notebooks, on separate pieces of paper kept in a file, or with an electronic device.

Typically, the only people who read students’ dialog journals are their teachers. It is unfortunate for three reasons if no one else other than teachers read students’ journal entries.

• Students have an audience of only one person (i.e., their teacher), but many students enjoy sharing with more than one person.
• Other students lose the chance to learn from their classmates.
• It is a lot of work for teachers to respond to the entries of an entire class. Therefore, students often must wait a long time to receive feedback on their writing.

CL principles were applied to address this situation, and the Cooperative Dialog Journals technique was created. Here are the steps.

Step 1: The class discusses possible topics for their next dialog journal entry. Possible topics include what is currently being studied in class, projects students are working on, student suggestions for improving the class or improving a cooperative learning group they are in, or a free topic (i.e., students can write on any topic they want). Free topics can lead to students choosing completely different topics.

Step 2: When students write their entries, they leave ample space for feedback. For example, they have large margins on each side of the page or write on every other line. Of course, with word processing, this is not necessary.

Step 3: Students exchange entries with a partner in their CL group. The partner provides feedback. Usually, the feedback is based on the content of the entry, not on surface matters (e.g., spelling or grammar). Writing feedback gives students opportunities to practice their cooperative skills. Types of feedback can include:

• questions (e.g., for clarification or what the reader wants to know more about).
• reactions (e.g., what was surprising, exciting, sad, or happy in the entry).
• similarities and differences between the writer’s experiences and the reader’s experiences.
• friendly disagreements with opinions in the entry.
• praises (e.g., what the reader enjoyed about the entry).
• suggestions (e.g., what else could the writer talk about next time; actions to take in response to what was discussed in the entry)

Step 4: Partners return the entries to the original writers. More than one partner can give feedback on the same entry, in which case, they might like to use different colors and let the writer know which color they used. Groups can discuss their entries.

Reflective Break

Have you ever done journaling or kept a diary? If so, what did you write about? Did you ever share it with anyone? If not, would you like to try journaling?

Sample Response

Sometimes, when my students do journaling, I also do a journal, and I send my entries to my students, either online or hard copy.