Journaling as a central focus in the secondary classroom

honors thesisCollege of HumanitiesEnglishJanet KaufmanFor my thesis project, I have studied the role of journaling into a secondary language arts classroom. Everyone can learn about themselves through writing, and I have explored this idea further. We can learn a lot when we simply put our pens to paper and write what we already have within our minds, so I am studying to find a way to teach students about themselves and then give them a chance to use journaling that will take place each day in the classroom to create prose and narrative works. This project is divided into four parts. The first part includes gathered research from different researchers, teachers and writers on types and functions of journaling. The second part delves into the Common Core State Standards to reveal how journaling can be a part of Utah's required educational goals, and in which areas of the curriculum journaling will have the most success. The third part explores how to transform journal entries into prose. Myriad published works (novels, plays, poetry, etc.) have used journals as a basis of their creation, and I highlight these works and brainstorm ways to give students the opportunity to invent their own works based on journals. The fourth part of the project is my own conclusions and introspections as a language arts teacher about how journaling functions as a whole in the classroom, especially focusing on the art of revision