Blue Books Reimagined
Claire used blue books as a form of in-class journaling, reflection, and process-based practice writing. At the start of the semester, she distributed fresh blue books to her classes with an introductory prompt based on the learning outcomes of the class as a way to create a baseline for students’ writing, both to get to know the students as well as to learn more about their handwriting, thought process, and timed writing ability. Claire would then collect the books at the end of class. As the semester progressed, she would slowly increase the amount of writing. The prompts ranged from reading-based responses to creative musings to self-reflections. Scaffolding assignments, like annotated bibliographies, practice theses, short “they say/I say” essays, six sentence arguments, outlines, and free writing were conducted in class using blue books alongside creative poems, music video storyboarding, short story writing, and post-unit reflections based on the Taxonomy of Reflection. She then asked students to engage in the think-pair-share model where they would discuss their blue book answers with a partner, then either share out to the whole class or build upon incrementally larger sharing groups until the whole class had rejoined to discuss their ideas.
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