I am a primary school teacher in Ireland and am currently pursuing a masters in education at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. As part of an action research study, I analyzed the use of learning logs in our primary school as a strategy for reading comprehension. I was intrigued by an approach I read about in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, which focused on combining interaction and discus-sion with reading logs (Hurst, 2005). My stu-dents had been using learning logs, but adding the class discussion intrigued me. The article described two studies where the strategy was used with middle and high school students and college students, but I felt that it would work very well with my ten- and eleven-year-old students also.
To replicate the studies by Hurst (2005), my students used the strategy three times and then completed the same survey Hurst used in her studies. Before beginning, I modeled with my own example on the board. Then it was the students' turn to practice. To begin, my stu-dents drew a line down the center of their paper. Then they read a text about the Amazon River and chose two things they thought were interesting. On the left side of the paper, they wrote what they found interesting. On the other side, they wrote why they thought it was interesting.
After completing the learning log entry, each student volunteered to share what he or she thought was interesting. I could not believe how much we covered in our discussion and how little input was required from me! The conversation just flowed, and to top it all off, the principal walked into the classroom mid-discussion, and the children shared with him all the interesting facts they had discovered. He was very impressed!
Of the 19 children in my classroom, 14 strongly agreed that they would enjoy using the class text discussions again, 12 strongly agreed talking about the text gave them new thoughts or ideas they had not thought of before the discussion, and 12 strongly agreed they had learned more and remembered the material better using the reading response lessons than they did from listening to a teach-er or from just reading the text and answering the questions. In response to the question on the survey about discussion helping with memory, 11 students responded that they strongly agreed, and 11 students strongly agreed that they liked it when the teacher commented on their reading response logs. Half of the students reported they strongly agreed that writing their responses to the text helped them remember the text better than just reading it, and half strongly agreed that they enjoyed sharing something from their reading response log with the group.
The survey asked students to report how much of the text they read: 14 read the entire assigned text, three read just enough of the text to complete the reading response logs, and two did not read the assigned text and did not complete the reading response logs.
The results of the new strategy were positive overall, and I will use it again. It was invigorating to hear my students excited about what they were reading.
Reference
Hurst, B. (2005). My journey with learning logs.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(1), 42-46.
Learning Logs in the Primary Grades
by Lisa Donnellan
Lisa Donnellan is a primary school teacher who is currently teaching 5th grade in Dublin, Ireland. She is a graduate student pursuing her masters in education at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.
Classroom Close-Up
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