Double Entry Diaries
From Tompkins, G. E. (2003). Samples from “Compendium of Instructional Procedures” In Literacy for the 21st century, 3rd ed. (p. 473). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
Double-Entry Diaries are a version of two-column note-taking and are tailored for guiding students in monitoring their comprehension.
Introduce Double-Entry Diaries by asking students to divide a sheet of paper in half vertically (hot dog fold). The left side of the notes is reserved for specific information from a text, such as a short passage, quote, factual information, or a summary. The right column provides students the opportunity for their written responses or the students’ personal reactions and connections to what was written in the left column.
For example, a teacher might lift a quote from the novel she is reading aloud to model this process with students. The passage below is taken from The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. On the right side, the teacher records her thinking. The teacher is in essence “thinking aloud” and modeling how her background knowledge has connected to the text, and how her knowledge helps her understand the geographic relation and makes it more meaningful. Emphasize during this interaction with students that proficient readers constantly seek to use their personal knowledge to help them make sense of new information.
From the book What this means to me
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“The house in which Victor lived and worked stood close to a canal; so close, in fact, that the water lapped against its walls. At night, he sometimes dreamed that the house was sinking into the waves, and that the sea would wash away the causeway that Venice clings to, breaking the thin thread that binds the city to Italy’s mainland. “ p. 1 par. 2
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The first sentence incorporates such vivid imagery. I can almost hear this! I love the author’s word choice – lapped. This is such a descriptive verb. It reminds me of an afternoon this summer sitting on a dock and listening to the wakes lap the planks of the dock. I love how the author uses the metaphor of a thin thread and compares this to the causeway that leads into Venice from the mainland. I think that is a pretty good comparison because a causeway is like a bridge that goes across water. The causeway could be delicate like a piece of thread. This reminds me of an article that I just read from Time For Kids. The article was about the efforts of many Venetians to save Venice from sinking. This is really fascinating because parts of Victor’s dream could actually come true! Venice really is sinking, while at the same time the sea that surrounds Venice (Adriatic) is rising. Venice has a causeway that leads to it because it is situated in the middle of a lagoon. Why might people build a city in the middle of a lagoon? I think Victor’s dream could be about the sea trying to reclaim Venice, or take Venice back; or at least the land it is built upon; The causeway is the means of accessing Venice from the mainland. The causeway is the thread. I wonder if this is connected to a larger theme in the book? I wonder if something or someone is trying to reclaim something or someone else. I am unsure about what the “thread” or causeway that connects these people, places, or things may be.
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Step 2: The above example asks students to consciously make connections to what they are reading by considering how what they know might relate to new information. In addition, students should verbalize how their personal connections contributed to a greater understanding of a passage. For this activity, the teacher could instruct students to label the right column: “What this means to me.”
Other comprehension strategies that could form the focus for the
right column of a Double-Entry Diary include:
Step 3: With practice, students can begin to use Double-Entry Diaries as an ongoing method of tracking their thinking.