Teachers’ Guide to Commonplace Books
Getting Students Started on Long-term Learning
Commonplace books are special collections of knowledge curated by individual persons.
Commonplace books
Say, for example, you want to write about how your day went: You went for a walk, wrapped a gift, picked up prescriptions, and watched a documentary. You would write that sequence of events in a diary. If you want to write about why you chose that particular gift for a particular person, you write that in a journal. More than just detailing a sequence of events, a journal entry will include more of your insights and realizations. A “notebook,” used colloquially, is a place to put class lecture notes, and a “bullet journal” is a place to make bulleted lists, generally of things you have to do. Notebooks and bullet journals are similar in that most (of course not all) of what’s being written down is being written down because it needs to be learned or it needs to be done; the impetus is need, not want or desire or deep interest.
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Now let’s say you decide to look up information about that bird you saw on your walk, research a few facts about the gift you are wrapping, note the side effects of that medication you picked up, and learn something factual you want to remember forever in that documentary? You enter those facts, testimony, examples and other evidentiary knowledge into your commonplace book. It’s your personal encyclopedia. You own it. You are responsible for its creation.
Normalize curiosity and long-term learning
And it can become a student’s personal encyclopedia, an ongoing project that encourages hands-on, long-term learning about the things that interest them, even if just a little. The introduction of the commonplace book normalizes curiosity and learning and creates a space for it, both physical space and the time and permission to complete it. The creation of a commonplace book is a demonstration that knowledge has value. The students’ personal interests have value. When the teacher gives students the time and permission to gather information about topics that interest them, it teaches students that knowledge worthy of their time and effort.
Teach that knowledge is not a “done deal”
The commonplace book also embodies constructivist learning. That is, knowledge is never just a “done deal,” a finished product delivered by an authority; it’s assembled gradually through selection, transcription, annotation, and revision. Each entry in a commonplace book requires a student to make judgments about relevance and meaning. Understanding is built, not just received. By deciding where to look, what to record, and how to organize it within a system they have created for it, students practice evaluating and organizing information independently from their teachers. Even better, when teachers learn from students and are vocal about that learning, it shifts the paradigm and emphasizes that learning is not only normal, but can be reciprocal: They can become the expert in the room.
Encourage metacognition
One of my favorite pedagogical concepts is metacognition, and a commonplace book supports metacognition. As students choose new content and find a place for it in their commonplace book, they also have to reflect on what they find worth remembering, how ideas connect, and how their understanding of a subject has changed. When students revisit earlier entries, they encounter evidence of intellectual growth and revision. This return to previous ideas leads to retention; they are no longer just learning something long enough to take a test. They “own” their commonplace book and have the authority to rearrange it based on what they’ve learned, and learned, and learned again.
Supplies and organization
There are many ways to create and organize a commonplace book. A well-known example is the method used by John Locke, who used initial letters and vowel sounds to organize ideas. Virginia Wolfe took a scrapbooking approach and organized her pages categorically. You might use one or both of these methods or come up with something entirely new. Index cards with subject headings, citations, and content can be stored and organized into categorical envelopes, and notebook pages or hole-punched pages can be arranged and rearranged in three-ring binders as subject headings grow and change. Anything you can write with and write on can be used to collect the information you want to collect, from thick vellum to inexpensive spiral notebooks, or just pieces of scrap paper held together by paperclips. Any of these can be used as pages in commonplace books. Once collected and personalized, those might become art books, junk journals, scrapbooks with beautifully collaged pages, or simple manilla folders in a filing cabinet.
Aren’t graded
Because a commonplace book is never finished, grading simply becomes a matter of encouragement toward growth, rather than an emphasis on final product. It’s an excellent candidate for multiple submissions, one-on-one meetings, and coaching a student’s research and organizational skills. The project is never “done,” it just grows. Teachers who help students maintain a low-stakes, high reward feeling toward their commonplace books will be helping encourage them to keep the project growing long after the class has wrapped up.
Meets “bigger” outcomes
A commonplace book project teaches students how knowledge is gathered, valued, and sustained over time. By creating a personal system for collecting and organizing information, students experience learning as cumulative rather than passive or just “for a grade.” It reinforces curiosity, supports metacognitive reflection, and lets students become active participants in the construction of their own knowledge and understanding. For teachers, the commonplace book offers a flexible, low-stakes way to model long-term learning and persistence: It teaches students that knowledge is not tossed away when a test is over, learning is never finished, and curiosity deserves a special, curated physical space and a bit of their time.
