The role of children's journals in elementary school science activities

This article reports on a study that investigated the ways that children's use of science journals aided their acquisition of science understandings i n one kindergarten and one fourth-grade classroom. The questions for invest igation were: how does the child contextualize the science experience on th e journal page? How do child-produced graphics on the journal page reflect the children's experiences with other school texts? The study found that ch ildren recontextualized their understandings of the science investigation a nd phenomena by using three types of mental contexts that were reflected in their science journals: these contexts were imaginary, experienced, and in vestigative worlds. By drawing on these three worlds or internal contexts, the children were able to pull the external phenomenon into an internal con text that was familiar to them. The child's construction of ideas about a c urrent science experience as expressed on the journal page may reflect expe riences with other conventional texts. In this study the children's represe ntations of their imaginary, experienced and/or investigative worlds were s haped by other texts and structures such as school science texts. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 43-69, 2001.