Social Studies Journal

We had our Social Studies lesson today and we talked about all kind of interesting things! Some of the key points we covered were: 

• the fur trade
• the Beaver War 
• the role of the chief 
• a little dabble in the history of the Hudson's Bay Company 

The boys and girls were then asked to complete their learning journal. The quality of the work produced just keeps getting better and better!  The students are asked to write about three things they learned from the day's lesson.  Many students opt to write what I call "2 in 1" sentences. They'll give a fact but provide additional information to accompany it.  For example, one child wrote that: Today I learned about the role of the Chief and how only men could be Chief.  That's really taking this task to a higher level when a child writes a complex sentence such as this.  

Students are also asked to write a question they still have about the day's lesson. They've learned that it's important to write a detailed, thoughtful question and that simply writing something vague such as: I wonder where they lived,  just isn't going to cut it. 

The Social Studies learning journal is a great exercise for many reasons: 

• it encourages students to pay attention during the lesson
• students need to reflect on their learning
• students need to summarize and report on their learning
• students need to consider what they would still like to learn (more reflecting!) 

 

And then there's the writing component: 

• students must write in full sentences
• they must write detailed sentences so that someone unfamiliar with the topic would still learn something from the facts reported
• they must use the vocabulary from the lesson 
• they must structure their "I still want to know" in the form of a question (I'm humming the Jeopardy theme now)