Learning Logs
Learning logs and journals are useful methods for assessing student progress. Learning logs are most commonly used in assessing literacy but there are many crossovers into content areas other than those associated with reading and writing. Properly understood and used, learning logs become a vehicle for exchange among parents, teachers, and students.
There is some overlap between portfolios and learning logs; in fact, both journals and learning logs frequently provide artifacts for the student portfolio. The most valuable result of learning logs is that as students write to learn. They also learn to recognize their own and other’s good work. Both learning logs and journals assist the learning process. Journals are free-flowing and subjective, relying on opinion and personal experience. Learning logs are concise, objective, factual, and impersonal in tone.
Logs can include problem-solving entries from mathematics or science, observations from lab experiments, questions about lectures or reading, lists of books students have read or would like to read, and homework assignments.