Dialogue journal

A dialogue journal is an ongoing written interaction between two people to exchange experiences, ideas, or reflections. It is used most often in education as a means of sustained written interaction between students and teachers at all education levels. It can be used to promote second language learning (English and other languages) and learning in all areas.

Dialogue journals are used in many schools as a form of communication between teachers and students to improve the life that they share in the classroom by exchanging ideas and shared topics of interest, promoting writing in a non-evaluative context, and promoting student engagement with learning. They are also used between teachers and teacher trainers to provide professional development opportunities and improve teaching.

Dialogue journal interaction occurs in notebooks, letters, email exchanges, and audio journals. The important feature is that two people are communicating with each other, about topics and issues of interest to both, and the interaction continues over time.

Dialogue journals are a teacher-developed practice, first researched in the 1980s in an ethnographic study of a sixth grade American classroom with native English speakers, supported by a grant to the Center for Applied Linguistics from the National Institute of Education (NIE), Teaching & Learning Division. Applications to other educational settings developed quickly as a way to enhance writing development and the teacher-student relationship across linguistic and cultural barriers, with increasing use in second language instruction, deaf education, and adult literacy education. Since the 1980s, dialogue journal practice has expanded to many countries around the world.

The use of dialogue journals as a classroom practice was first documented in the early 1980s, with an in-depth study of its use in a sixth grade classroom in Los Angeles. The teacher, Leslee Reed, wrote daily throughout the school year with each of her students in a dialogue journal (a small notebook) to promote personalized, ongoing, supportive communication.

...
Wikipedia