Exploring the Effectiveness of Journal Writing on Learning Social Studies: A Comparative Study

This study compares the effectiveness of two types of journal writing on learning social studies in four seventh-grade classrooms. Both journal formats incorporate reading comprehension strategies with journal writing. One format required students to structure their journal responses according to the steps involved in the K-W-L comprehension strategy format. The other journal format required students to summarize what they had read. Groups were pre- and post-tested in October and in May of the following spring to compare the effectiveness of each type of journal format. A quasi-experimental design was used with results analyzed with an analysis of variance. Results indicate that the K-W-L groups learned more content material to a statistically significant degree than did the Summary groups.