Inspiring a youth to begin a journal?  Our absolulte favorite book to inspire a child to creatively journal remains Amelia's Notebook by Marissa Moss.  This book is actually the first in a huge and wonderful series of notebooks published by Amelia (through Marissa Moss).

Each book is published as though it is actually written in a composition book.  Complete with lines and margins, the pages look like a real journal.  Each book in the series tells a story from Amelia's life, and it uses the journal format to do its telling.

Amelia loves to draw and tape things into her notebooks, then write about what she has drawn or attached.  This is a marvelous technique to inspire younger students search for artifacts that warrant journal entries.

The other thing that Amelia does well is she journals about things that happen to lots of people, using details and voice. Students who feel their lives are not interesting enough to be written about in a journal learn a valuable lesson from Amelia. Amelia's stories of cafeteria food, fingernails, family trips, and class projects are inspiring.

On this page, find other ideas and resources that we hope will inspire more energetic and creative journaling from your student writers.

Resources for Inspiring Better Student Journals:
Have you seen WritingFix's favorite feature for journal keepers?  Over 150,000 writers visit our... Daily Random Prompt Generator ...annually to find ideas for their daily journals.	Here's a great lesson from the collection of chapter book prompts that WritingFix began in 2006. This lesson is also featured at HistoryFix, and it requires students to create a fictional journal entry from the point-of-view of a small character who has witnessed a significant moment in history. Lesson title: Historical Journal Entries Lesson's mentor text: Pedro's Journal by Pam Conrad Lesson's focus trait: Organization (using the journal format) Lesson's support trait:Voice (capturing a character's perspective realisitcally) Lesson summary: Writers will create a detailed journal entry from the point-of-view of a character who never actually existed.  The journal entry will be from a day in history that the writer has researched and found interesting facts about.  The journal entry will combine a character's voice and historical facts.
More journal ideas to come soon! Keep checking back with us!