CW+Weekly+Journals

A journal is a great place to store house ideas and to experiment. It is a place where you can have total freedom with you own unique sense of creativity. It is a place to practice, practice, practice! After all, the more you write, the better your writing will become. Remember, that most famous writers maintained personal journals.
 * Why Keep a Journal?**

You are the owner of the journal. As a writer, you know what you like to write about and what interests you. The journal is about creativity and expression. Therefore, write whatever you want to write: a poem, a story, a portion of a story, random thoughts, how your day went at home or at school. Don't be afraid to experiment - this is your space and your place to practice your writing skills! However, remember that you are submitting your work in a public school environment; therefore, you still need to maintain certain levels of decency in the language and expression you use.
 * What Should I Write About in my Journal?**

You are to write in your journal every single day, except on the day that I collect them for grading. You are to date each entry. Each entry should be one page in length in the journal that you were given. Do not skip lines or pages in your journal. You will receive one journal booklet for each marking period. Put your name and marking period number on the outside cover. You may decorate the cover of your journal if you wish. Many students have fun with decorating their journals and feel that doing so makes the journal that much more personal. Also, please consider the teacher, so make your writing legible and use readable ink.
 * How Ofter Should I Write in my Journal and How Long Should My Journal Entries Be?**

I will collect your journals once each week and return them the following day. During the time that I have your journal for grading purposes, you are exonerated from daily journal writing. When I return your journal, you are to resume with your daily journal entries. I will announce on the Wikispace each week as to what day the journal will be collected.
 * How Often Will the Journals be Collected?**

I want you to feel comfortable with your journal writing; thus, I focus on quantity of writing and not quality of writing. Simply, I am grading you on the fact that you are suppose to have seven entries, or one for each day, when you submit your journal. Each entry will be worth five points, for a total of thirty-five points per journal submission. You will lose points if your entries are not an entire page in length or if you do not have the required seven entries. While I am not grading on quality of writing, it is still important that you try to put quality writing within your journal. After all, this is a place for you to practice honing your craft as a writer. You also want to remember that good writing requires proper conventions and mechanics. If you are serious about your writing, as I am sure you are, then you want to try to present quality work for your own intrinsic pride as a writer. Now, this certainly does not mean that everything has to be a completed, finished, stunning piece. For example, there may be some times when you start a story or a poem and become bored with it. That is perfectly okay. Other times you may just want to put a snippet of an idea in your journal, or you might have a lot of different unconnected thoughts that spin through you head as you are writing in your journal. Again, this is all okay. Think of your journal as a place to store ideas and thoughts, some of which you might even return to and expand upon at a later time. The important thing is to get your creativity down on paper. In doing so, you will realize that there are indeed some pretty amazing things running through that head of yours!
 * How Will the Journals be Graded?**