Welcome to the first unit of our strange, unpredictable COVID-19 school year! I struggled to think of something that would be easy for students and parents in a home-school scenario, but also interesting and exciting, with at least a side dish of already-established ELA skills to practice. I decided on journaling!

So much of what we know about history, we learned through the journals and primary documents created by the normal people who struggled through difficult times. We are in the midst of a historically difficult time in our country.

We're going to do our part to document our feelings and experiences just like any other stalwart group of pioneers have done at any other time in our country's history.

Week One: Journaling to Capture a Moment

Monday, 9/28/2020 Journal? Like Writing about your Feelings? Ew!
We'll start our unit by answering the most obvious question: what is a journal? Historical journals have such an important place in telling the story of real people who go through all the major events that define us as a country. I want our students' voices to be heard. The trick will be to balance personal information in the context of COVID-19 information. Too much of either, and we'll end up with a news summary or a personal diary, neither of which will help future generations of students to live through what we've lived through. 

We'll start with an informational Slides presentation defining journaling and sharing the expectations for a journal entry.

Then we'll use an interactive Google Slide to sort whether a short paragraph would be part of a journal, or part of a diary or news summary.

Finally, we'll take a stab at "writing" our first journal entry!
Tuesday, 9/29/2020: Close Read / Analysis of Amazing COVID Journals
Today, we'll perform a close read using eight of our predecessor's journals. These journals were written early in the quarantine as part of this very same project. You'll notice everything that we went over yesterday, about the balance between personal and news, and how everything that's happening is interconnected. While the editing isn't perfect, they're all readable, and really capture what it's like to go through the COVID-19 quarantine.

Each time you read one of the journals, you'll respond to the Google Form to answer some questions, and gain some insight about what you should include when we write our journals.
Wednesday, 10/1/2020: Why Bother Writing a Journal (Mr? Why are we doing this?)
Today, you'll read an article on a website that shares 10 reasons for journaling. The author, Keith Norris, has ranked them from his perspective. You'll organize Post-It notes on a JamBoard ranking them based on your own thoughts and ideals. Then, you'll answer a question on Google Classroom explaining why it's important to keep a journal. 
Thursday, 10/2/2020: Don't "Flip" Out - Flipgrid Tutorial
Today, we'll model how to use Flipgrid. We know you've used it in social studies, but we want to make sure you're FlipGrid EXPERTS. These journals, after all, are primary documents capturing your life as middle-school students during the time of COVID-19. It is possible that this will be the most historically significant event of your lives. 
Friday, 10/3/2020: "Write" your Second Journal Entry
The journal project itself is easy. Students will use this document, or Flipgrid to write two journal entries each week.

Each entry should take 15-20 minutes to write, be a few paragraphs or 3-4 minutes of video long, and include a date and title.

When in doubt, see Karpie's Exemplar Journal, or our Student Journal Exemplars

Topic 2: Refining our Journaling Practice

This week, we'll refine our journalling skills and start reading the Diary of Anne Frank to learn from, arguably, the best historical journaler in the business.
Monday, 10/5/2020 - Shhh... If you listen closely, you might hear my narrative voice.
Today, we'll start by watching a few of the Flipgrid journals and reading a few of the Google Classroom journals to celebrate some of our peer's amazing work. On Google Classroom, you'll offer your classmates' amazing journals one specific, evidence-based compliment before we move onto this week's work. This week, we're working on establishing our narrative voice. We develop narrative voice early in the year because during this unit, students narrative voice is a reflection of themselves. They don't need to sound academic, or informative, or spooky. They just need to sound like themselves.
Tuesday, 10/6/2020 - The Diary of Anne Frank
Today, students will start reading The Diary of Anne Frank. If you're an education dork, we're not using it as an anchor text, or a central text, it's just going to work as an inspiration for our students' own journals. This is primarily a creative writing unit, not a literature unit. Today, students will read an excerpt from The Diary of Anne Frank​, and identify "personal," "world," and "impact," statements from Anne's historical journal. They'll do this by using the highlight feature like we did during our first week's Zen Classroom activities. Then they'll summarize the journal entry by answering a Google Question.
Wednesday, 10/7/2020 - "Highlight" Your Own Journal
One of the most important (and oft overlooked) skills in an ELA classroom is developing the ability for students to self reflect, and to evaluate the quality of their own writing. A lot of teachers use a lot of well-designed rubrics and offer thoughtful and actionable feed back. Our peer-review process slowly helps students assess their own writing, create their own action plan for improvement, and in doing so, it creates students that can autonomously improve their own writing.

Today, students will evaluate and "highlight" their own journal entry based on the same criteria they used to evaluate Anne Frank's entry yesterday. They'll look for how their journal reflects their personal life, the situation in the world, and how those two factors impact each other. Then they'll write a single-sentence goal for their own, next journal entry.
Thursday, 10/8/2020: Planning our Next Entries
Today's lesson is intended to accomplish several goals. It should help students' second journal entry be better than their first. It should help them ground their daily experiences in what's happening in the world at large - realize that the reason you're eating Ramen Noodles again is because meat prices have gone up so much, and between work, distance learning, and all the COVID inconveniences, parents barely have time to grocery shop.

Basically, we'll introduce students to a simple graphic organizer. You could think of it like a Venn Diagram, but that would limit your understanding. We'll use Jamboard again, but unconventionally. Students will pick one color for "personal," information, one color for, "world," and then they'll use the line or draw feature to connect the two to find the balance of how the events of our world impact us as humans, and journal writers.
Friday, 10/9/2020: One Day, Two Entries!
Today's cyber lesson should be easy. Students are reading and summarizing an additional entry in Anne Frank's journal, and recording or writing an additional entry in their own COVID-19 journal - which we already planned yesterday. Don't forget, journals can be video logs done on Flipgrid, OR they can be done traditionally using Google Classroom, but they don't have to be both. Happy Friday, ya'll.
...everyone's planner since March. A blank, dateless, empty morass.

Makeup Week: 10/13/2020-10/16/2020

Greetings! Even though it has been declared a make up week, we are still meeting today through Meets. As promised, no new material will be shared. Students will log on at the normal time, and I will share lists showing groups of students, with an assigned time during our 40 minute lesson.

Students will just find their name, hear a few directions, then leave the Meet for a few minutes before coming back at their scheduled time. The groups won't be labeled (I'm not in the business of making anyone feel bad about their average, especially not in any public way) but they will be separated by students' ELA scores.
Basically, the groups will be

1) REALLY Failing
2) Barely Failing
3) Barely Passing
4) Really Passing (AKA ELA Ballers)

Each group will hear a specific set of advice based on their academic needs. For example, students who are REALLY failing need "bang for the buck" assignments that can be finished quickly and easily to massively boost their average, so we'll share the easiest assignments to complete. Students who are barely passing will hear about the most educationally valuable lessons, and make sure they've completed and understand those, because they're already passing, so we can focus on big-picture learning, and not compliance.

Topic 3: News vs. Experience

Most news covers events we don't experience, because most events happen on a small scale, to specific people, or a specific family, or house, or pet, or city. We hear about, watch, and read about things that happen far away, usually to people we don't know. What makes this event different is that we all experience it together. Last week, we read a diary [journal] from an author our age from a different historic event.  This week, we'll broaden our understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic by comparing our experiences with the news coverage of the event.
Monday, 10/19/2020: Journal / News Connections
Students will watch 10-15 minutes of news coverage from any news source they choose. (I've linked a bipartisan and international variety of links to the right, but they're not limited to those options.) They will then complete a Google Doc graphic organizer about the news coverage, and throughout the week, add three entries to their journals, hopefully including this new, broader context to the events they experience in their daily life.

My bet is that whatever news source students choose, whether left, or right leaning, they won't capture the actual experience of boredom, Netflix, videogames, annoyance with parents and teachers, and talking to cats and dogs in the absence of friends and teachers.
Tuesday, 10/20/2020 and Wednesday, 10/21: Two Days, Two Entries!
Today's cyber lesson should be easy. Students are reading and summarizing an additional entry in Anne Frank's journal, and recording or writing an additional entry in their own COVID-19 journal - which we already planned yesterday. Don't forget, journals can be video logs done on Flipgrid, OR they can be done traditionally using Google Classroom, but they don't have to be both. 
​Thursday, 10/22/2020: Journal Peer Review
The second biggest mistake students make when writing journals is that they tend to "tell" the audience about what's happening instead of "showing" it. For example "Winston was the least popular kid in class." [telling] "As Winston walked into the cafeteria, carrying the same Disney-themed backpack from when he was a kid, all the students went silent, and stared intently at their lunches, hooking any available seats at their tables and pulling them closer in hopes that Winston wouldn't sit down." [showing] Today, we'll do a series of sorting activities in which students will categorize descriptions as "showing" or "telling." Afterwards, we'll come together to write our own examples of "showing" and "telling" writing in response to a series of creative-writing prompts.
Friday, 10/23/2020: One Day, Two Entries
​Today's cyber lesson should be easy. Students are finalizing their journals. Some students will add an entry. Some students still need five.
Writing is forever. We live in a world of "work" published online. social media status updates. Images shared. News streams. It all lives in the cloud. Most of it will be overlooked, but COVID-19 is an era-defining pandemic. Our words will resonate. We'll work to craft them carefully, to capture the essence of this moment.

COVID-19 Journal Project

With everyone struggling to find new software to use to interact with students, and sending home workbooks, and technology that might have hiccups, and cumbersome copying, and collating, and distributing thick, confusing packets, in ELA, we're keeping it simple! Historical journals were just written on a pad of paper. That's all our kids need to do. If they have the internet, then keeping a journal as a Googledoc is possible, but not necessary. Documenting history is what matters.

Journal Description

Students will keep a COVID-19 journal (15-20 minutes of writing, three times weekly.) These journals should use all the writing skills we've already practiced, but no one needs to learn anything new to keep up, Students should share what they think, how they feel, who they still see, who they miss, and anything else that captures what it's like to be an 8th grader enduring this pandemic.

Success Skills

Intentionally organize and write a narrative text.
[W8.3a, W8.3b, W8.3c, W8.3d, W8.3e]
Choose compelling and insightful evidence.
[SL 8.5, W 8.4, W 8.6, W 8.8, W 8.10]
Produce and revise clear writing that is free of errors.
[W8.4, W8.5, W8.6]

Journal Materials

Journal Informational Slides

Click the image to the left to learn about what a journal is, and for the purposes of our assignment, what it isn't. As usual, you'll read some examples and some non-examples of how a journal should sound. Todas las palabras son en Ingles y Easpanol.
Links to 16 historic diaries and journals.
Historic diaries and journals searchable by state, historical period, gender, etc. Includes pictures of the actual diaries!
Shares excerpts from ten meaningful, historic diaries.
Includes excerpts from twelve famous historical figures specific to WW2. Includes historical context to help understanding.

Examples of Famous / Historic Journals

To truly capture the importance of journaling, we need to look to the past. Click the link to the left to read some amazing examples of the journals from history. These people took it upon themselves to document their own experiences, and in doing so, they literally wrote the pages of history.

Karpie's Journal Exemplars

Because no in-person teaching can take place, I took the liberty to create an example of a week's worth of journal entries. I created them both digitally, but students can write them wherever is convenient. They include the time I spent working. They're pretty short, and intentionally disorganized, as I'd expect student journals to be. These aren't beautifully finished essays. They're journals. They'll include spelling errors. They won't be organized by my students. They'll be organized by historians fifty years from now when they look back at our "archaic" Google Classroom technology, which was the best we could muster in these technology-impaired times.

Journal Project Assignment

The journal project itself is easy. Students will use this document, or loose-leaf paper, or anything else that's easy to come by at home, to write three journal entries each week. Each entry should take 15-20 minutes, be about a page long, and include a date and title.

When in doubt, see Karpie's Exemplar Journal.

Writing Tools

The goal of every successful ELA classroom is to help students develop into the best possible writers that they can become. The tools to the left are what we use in my classroom to help students on the road to above grade level writing and beyond. 

Let's document history together using the writing skills we've practiced all year long!
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