Teaching Kids to Keep a Commonplace » Simply Convivial
This is a guest post by Kathy Weitz. The Schole Sisters have done a fabulous job of telling y’all what a commonplace book is and why you should do it. I have also written about my own personal journey with commonplacing. Commonplace books are a fixture in our homeschool and in our local classical liberal arts co-op, Providence Prep, where I teach literature and English Studies. In fact, the copybooks and commonplace books are at the heart of the language arts curriculum which we are developing at Cottage Press. If keeping a commonplace book is new to you, I hope the some of the principles and practical ideas culled from my own homeschool and co-op experience will help you get a good start. Our Commonplace Books My students keep commonplace books from junior high on, averaging three or four commonplace entries per week. Yes, we do write in our books! Of course, this also means that students must own the books they study, so we make provision for that in our curriculum budgeting. Related
Toward a Life Well Read | Scholé Groups
Our high school Humanities II curriculum at Providence Prep concentrates on classic works of literature, poetry, and history—the Great Books canon of western civilization—contextualized by an outstanding history lecture series from Dr. George Grant. In general, our literature selections were written during the historical time period we are studying, although we reserve the right to stray from it a bit each year, most notably on two “Shakespeare Days”, during which the entire class period is devoted to one of the Bard’s masterpieces. Our focus at Providence Prep this year was Modernity, from the Enlightenment to the present. Literary selections included novels by Austen, Dickens, Shelley, Dostoyevsky, Orwell, and Lewis. Poets from Alexander Pope to T. “. . . one of my main endeavours as a teacher is to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire. . . .” — C. Read Write
Why You Should Always Carry a Notebook – The Mission
There isn’t one prolific creator of any kind that I know that hasn’t abided by the policy of carrying a notebook. I have stacks of Moleskine notebooks on my bookshelves. All the projects, books, and ideas that I’ve turned into reality started in the pages of my notebooks. If you let it, a notebook can become a platform for your imagination.It can give you the opportunity to rewrite the story of your life.It can enable you to create more than you consume In his amazing collection of essays The Life and Times of a Remarkable Misfit, my friend AJ Leon says the following: I use a tiny Moleskine as my idea notebook. In his piece on advice for recent graduates, Austin Kleon said the following: Carry your journal around with you and write in it all the time: make notes in between job interviews, doodle while you’re watching Netflix, daydream about what you want out of life, etc. Richard Branson carries a notebook. Ryan Holiday has written about the value of a commonplace book.
Strategies to Keep a Commonplace Book – Critical Margins
To keep everything simple, I use a standard notebook. I used to like the composition notebooks you can buy at any department store but now I prefer a sturdier A5-sized notebook (though recently I’ve also used a traveler’s notebook, which I like). No matter the notebook, I start it with at least two pages set aside at the front for a table of contents and one page at the back for an index. Then I number each page as I go. Where Is It Located? This is simple enough. If you don’t want to number each page or if you’re worried you’ll forget, I recommend buying a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook, which includes a table of contents section at the beginning, and each page is numbered. What Is in the Book? Every time I add something to my commonplace book, I write the article or book name and author at the top of the page. What Type of Content Is This? I love using tags on my computer and Evernote because they add context to my files and notes. I use what’s referred to as the “Japanese notebook hack.”
