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Make a Great Nature Journal Page
Balancing Art and Science in a Composition Classroom
Several years ago I rewrote my course materials for English Composition with the goal being a writing class that emphasized doing a thing students could write about when it came time to compose their final essays. I landed on getting them doing a thing outside. I broke writing down into some of its component parts, and I came up with outdoor exercises and accompanying writing prompts that emphasized how doing the thing outside helped them master those component parts.
The experiment worked, so I went on to write my textbook, Write Outside: Outdoor Activities and Writing Prompts for English Composition. The book is now in its third edition, and I continue to refine not only the book’s contents, but the way I present those contents in the classroom. We’re doing fewer of the outdoor exercises, focusing instead on one long-term study centered on the data they’re gathering in the field. In order to make it as hands-on as possible, I opted to require a physical nature journal, and I present it as a type of commonplace book; instead of collecting information about a variety of topics, however, they are collecting observations, data, and evidence about nature, eventually choosing only one topic for study. The students then write a paper about their study.
