The Point of Learning Logs

 

One of the buzzwords in my district is ‘innerput’.  This is the process by which we take information and internalize it in order to use it – to apply to a new situation or allow us to optimize our creativity.  The progression of learning using this paradigm is something like this:

INPUT  - information from various sources including research, teacher, reading, or videos

→

INNERPUT – reflection, writing, internalizing, processing INPUT

→

OUTPUT – the information can be applied to a new situation, whether on a standardized test, a new problem, or any other student product

Innerput or reflection is equally necessary for teachers.  Writing these blog posts is one way that I gather my thoughts and put my ideas in order.   There are other ways, but for me, nothing connects learning to understanding quite like typing or writing things by hand.

In a Project Based Learning classroom, innerput becomes even more crucial.  My students are exposed to a vast amount of information via their research and design activities.  If they do not take the time to slow down and process what they are encountering or doing, then they will not get to the deep learning necessary to understand the concepts in my class.

To give my students a chance for innerput, one of the methods I use is the daily learning log.  This is a document that they create and keep, and they should write down what they have done or thought about or learned for that day. 

A learning log can be just about anything that shows information being processed.  Some examples included data tables from testing, design ideas with drawings and explanations, facts from research with summaries of why they are important or relevant, and further questions that their research has uncovered.

Convincing my students that a learning log is crucial has been a battle.  Most students didn’t really produce decent logs until the start of the second semester.  Next year, I think I will try to scaffold the learning log requirement, gradually letting them have the freedom and choice as to how their learning log will look.  I may do something like have questions related to each mastery concept for them to answer or a concept map to fill out.

Another issue has been that students will copy something directly into their log without stopping to think about what it might mean.  This is where my conversations with students become so critical.  Usually my biggest clue that they don’t know what they wrote is use of ‘big words’ or overly complicated sentence structure.  When this happens, I need to have several methods of assessing students’ mastery of a particular concept so I can tease out whether they really understand it.  Many times I will question them, they’ll reply, and I’ll ask further questions.  As we dig into the details of the concept, the student will gradually get a deeper understanding of what they had researched.  At that point, I will tell them to write down what we just talked about in their own words.  Then I look at their learning log again and ask additional questions if necessary.

When I see them pull their notebooks out for reference, then I know that they have produced a good learning log that they can use to apply the information to other situations.  They are gaining a deeper and more enduring understanding of the concepts when they can use their own writings as supplementary materials.