Critical Thinking on a Blank Page

📓At PCS, our upper grade students make use of black and white journals rather than textbooks or workbooks for our Integrated Studies Unit. Blank journals give facilitators the freedom to customize the materials they introduce during the unit and they give students the space to compose notes in ways that make sense to them. Not everyone learns in lines of text, and journals give kids the space to explore other compositions. These journals become treasured tools for students to refer back to during the course of study as they are living records of students’ thinking.

Currently, fourth and fifth graders are working through the intricacies of the timeline of Cooksonia fossils which were the first plant to grow upright, as a precursor to trees. Students took notes about Cooksonia’s journey through the Silurian and early Devonian periods. Their notes feature illustrations, graphs, writing and drawings composed in ways that make sense to them. Some notes are color coded, some pieces are taped in, some concepts are hand drawn for clarification, but all express the learning that took place today. As students work with blank journals they learn to reflect on their own documentation methods, learning how best they can make their learning visible in ways that are meaningful to them.