At our Scholar Retreat in September I spoke on Common Place Books. We are actually going to keep Scholar Journals based on Common Place Books. Here are my cut and paste notes from my internet research on the topic. If you want to learn more about what a Common Place Book and your Scholar Journal can be, you could start here. There was way too much good info to fit into our class at the retreat. Also, check out the post about LivingWater where I'm hopefully going to be able to post my first-ever powerpoint presentation on the subject of Living Water (from Elder Bednar's talk) and Scholar Journals...
Over at the PigPog Blog is a great post about Storing Nuggets of Information, calling for ideas. This is something I've been struggling with for many years myself, and have only lately been making any sort of headway. When I think about all the years of WordPerfect files, text files, photos stuck between pages of books, MS Office files, sundry (often ancient) forms of databases, scraps of paper in drawers, JPGs, PSDs, PCXs, shoeboxes of articles, OOo files, CorelDRAW illustrations, Commodore 64 Paperclip files, and so on, it's a wonder I have any sort of retention at all except for memory. Half of the files I've gathered over the years are locked in obsolete proprietary formats gathering dust on 5.25" or 3.5" floppies, probably never to be seen again. (For the record, none of my current computers even have a floppy drive). I've had to face the fact that many of these potentially valuable scraps of information have been lost forever. There is a possible solution for this dilemma, though, and one that comes from a bygone age. For many centuries, it was one kept faithfully by the learned, the artistic, the scholarly, and even the merely curious. I'm referring to the Commonplace Book.
Enter the "commonplace book" system (a literal translation of the locus communis, referring to a theme or argument of common application) that started around the fifth century BCE, became very popular during the Renaissance, and continued through to the early part of the 20th century. From the Oxford English Dictionary:
Commonplace-book. Formerly Book of common places. orig. A book in which 'commonplaces' or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement. First usage recorded: 1578.
The general heads mentioned would be a topic-oriented approach, the choosing of which would be attuned to the mind of the keeper, and hence ideally suited to the needs of an individual rather than a collective. It then becomes an extension of our personal interests and pursuits.
So here we sit, amongst the vast and towering constructions of a digital world, and yet we perceive there is a potential need for something like this. Why? Well, while it's true that many of us receive a good portion of our information online (especially if one is an I.T. professional), we still receive many little bits of data during the day in our offline hours as well. We still see TV news shows, we still read magazines, we still peruse newspapers, we still chat with friends, we still rush about the world persuing our individual lives and sensing stimuli. Because we rarely think to take down these valuable bits of information we encounter, they often disappear forever.
Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it. ... The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. ... The era of the commonplace book reached its peak in the late Renaissance, although commonplacing as a practice probably began in the twelfth century and remained widespread among the Victorians. It disappeared long before the advent of the sound bite." --Robert Darnton, "Extraordinary Commonplaces," The New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000
Besides the aforementioned writers, many other significant or learned people down through the centuries have kept them, including heads of state, artists, academics, lawyers, technicians, gardeners, clergy, and even quite ordinary families (and those lucky few who have preserved their family's commonplaces now have a treasure that they undoubtedly cherish). You'll see them repeatedly in the stories of the time. In Sir Arthur Conon Doyle's tales, Sherlock Holmes kept a large and sprawling commonplace book upon his shelves, essentially his own home-grown encyclopedia of people, places, crimes, and pertinent facts, like the colour of mud from various locations, or the consistency of tobacco ashes. In the middle of a case, Holmes would rush to his commonplace, haul down a book, and read out a newspaper article concerning (say) the disappearance of a hydraulics engineer a year prior. His attic of a brain remembered vague references, but the books held the details that allowed him to pursue his work. And so it was for everybody that used them.
Pay careful note to the bit in the last quote relating how people "read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book" -- doesn't this remind you of how the Internet and modern information overflow affect us every day? We can't stop the world and digest it in an orderly flow from beginning to end; we must make sense of it as it winds and unravels before us, and therefore need some sane place to collect it, dissect it, analyse it, reference it, learn it.
One might argue that an effective filing system with cabinets and folders serves much the same purpose, but with a somewhat less personal touch. There is, however, another fundamental difference, and it relates to the level of disposability of information. A filing cabinet system is a place with expanding folders where we can toss any mildly interesting or potentially useful piece of information. For example, we might file away a booklet with Internet usage statistics for 2003, or the tax guide for 2004, or a price quote, or a magazine article about the current crop of sinus medications. It is something that holds larger pieces of reference information, and that should be purged every now and then --about once a year, by the opinion of many organisational experts.
A commonplace book, on the other hand, is for keeping small but valuable snippets of information: phrases, sentences, paragraphs, small articles cut from the newspaper, sketches of locations, references to recommended books, meaningful chunks of statistics, inspirational quotes, handy measurements, geneological diagrams, biographical notes, and so forth. Contrary to what one keeps in a filing system, the commonplace book is an important source of finely-tuned information to help digest subjects, expand one's mind, and turn to for help on a particular topic. We don't generally need to purge such a thing; in fact, the greater the resource we build it, the more beneficial and cherished it becomes. It often makes fascinating reading on a dreary winter's night, or when you're facing some sort of mental blockage.
To all those who yearn for a non-digital way of collecting and organising helpful nuggets of information, I'd suggest considering a commonplace book as a way of keeping your data and inspirations in order. A little organising and collecting now will lead to huge dividends in the future.
In Part II of this article (coming very soon), we'll have a look at a few ways to set up a modern equivalent of the commonplace book.
The Commonplace Books (or just commonplaces) of old were series of books, stuffed with scraps, inspirations, snippets of information, sketches, clippings, photographs, poems, jokes, references, and anything else pertaining to the interest of the person (or group) who kept it. A common fixture in the homes of writers, professionals, artists and academics for many centuries, the notion has all but faded in this digital age of commodity data and instant searches. But there's no reason that we can't resurrect such a invaluable resource in this day and age. In fact, it could ultimately prove worthy not only for our daily work and pleasure, but also as a legacy to leave our children and grandchildren, a gathering of those pieces reflecting both the personality of its keeper and the happenings of a bygone day.
In Part I, we looked at the uses of commonplace books in history, and how they were used for gathering information and learning. In this article, we'll examine how a commonplace book works, and provide a few ideas towards starting and maintaining one of your own using modern supplies and methods. (Note that, while this article chiefly concerns keeping a paper-based version, many of the concepts work equally well using digital tools like DEVONthink Pro for Mac OS X.) A Word About Content
The commonplace book bears similarities with scrapbooks, since both often contain photographs, clippings, sketches, and bits of inspirational text. However, its organisation is usually based on subject matter, learning and useful information (rather than, say, flattened flowers and swatches of childhood wallpaper) and thus it tends to become a bit more practical for day-to-day usage and reference. The traditional scrapbook, on the other hand, often serves as a collection of personal memories, a wonderful way to reminisce and share cherished moments with family and friends. There can certainly be overlap, and in fact many people who have not kept scrapbooks de rigeur have kept a lot of personal information, including journal entries and touching family photographs, within their commonplaces. Essentially, a commonplace book contains anything you want it to contain. (Note that the image above is actually from a series of scrapbooks kept by L. M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables, but is a wonderful example of material that works in both scrapbooks and commonplaces.) That being said, it's important early on to set some sort of boundary, lest your books become weighted down with useless material. As I mentioned in the last article, a commonplace book is generally for short snippets of useful personalised information of lasting importance. This is the prime difference between a commonplace and a regular cabinet-based filing system, which often contains bulky and temporary material. When it comes to deciding where to store paper-based information, think of the following examples:
- Temporary information - upcoming conferences, menus, price quotes, coupons, statistics for a report, contact details for a project team, etc.
- Long articles & reports - anything that won't fit on one page or one clipping
- Financial/business data - this is ever-changing, rarely fixed for any length of time
- Catalogues and order forms
- Time management data - timesheets, archived calendars, billing cards, etc.
- Tax guides, receipts, expenses
- Medical and insurance records
- Someday/Maybe projects and ideas
- Amorphous and ever-growing bodies of information - if it's temporary or unverified or difficult to classify, put it into your filing cabinets (e.g., vague materials and ideas for a Master's thesis)
- Snippets of interest - those small nuggets of information that you collect regarding those topics of special or professional interest, often only a sentence or paragraph long, often with references to longer works
- Inspirational quotes or poems - related to work or personal life
- Personal anecdotes, jokes, stories told by relatives and friends
- Passages to learn or study - poems, chapter summaries, theories, other academic bits; it wasn't unusual to quote passages from Greek, Latin or other languages, along with a translation to study
- Clippings - related to work, family, personal goals, ideas for stories or projects, etc.
- Geneology - notes about your family, perhaps with short bios, photographs, diagrams of relationships
- Bibliographical information - about books you love, want to read, or have cause to use frequently
- Vacation details - collections of facts regarding destination, or --having gone-- photographs taken there, sketches drawn, reminiscences, etc.; this would be a more organised or classifiable version of what one could put in a scrapbook
- Project-related notes, ideas and inspiration - woodworking designs, fly-tying notes, old-time radio restorations, leather-working information, knitting patterns, circuit diagrams, medieval catapult schematics, and so on
- Short references, not likely to change - astronomical charts, weights and measures, calorie-counting tables, paper-size diagrams (*ahem*), Victorian England monetary systems, time zones, world/country distances, etc.
This is by no means a definitive list, only one intended to get you thinking about what should go in the filing cabinet, and what deserves a place in your commonplace. Ask yourself the question: Is this something of lasting value I'd like to keep around forever? A commonplace is rarely purged, while a file cabinet should be cleaned out yearly.
The Physical System
If you consider that a commonplace book is essentially a series of books where you can stuff away anything you consider of lasting importance, you can probably see some of the challenges towards keeping one. Ultimately, though, the single biggest decision to make --and the one that will most affect how you keep and organise your treasure-trove of information-- boils down to whether you will choose loose-leaf or fixed-leaf books.
Loose-leaf books have been around since the beginning, but the way in which the pages were temporarily bound varied by century; historically, the fastening may have been accomplished by a set of leather thongs (perhaps stiffened by wax or boiling in oil), a series of wooden pegs in sockets, or some metal pins or clasps. Today the best options are certainly binder rings or clips. A loose-leaf system, where you can insert or shuffle pages as necessary, does have its pros and cons. On one hand, it makes it very easy to add more pages to each subject as you need them, and arrange material in alphabetical order, but on the downside, the feels of a binder seems more temporary, and of inherently less quality than a fixed-leaf system. It's quite possible to use metallic binding clips (such as those for keeping together accounting records), but inserting and re-arranging the papers entails much more work than just unclipping some rings.
Fixed-leaf books are notebooks (like the acclaimed Moleskine) or journals whose pages are bound into the book, and therefore cannot be re-arranged. Again, there are pros and cons. The quality of the books is often high (as much as you're willing to pay for it... a series of a dozen or two Moleskines might stretching your budget), and the books can have a more permanent and "legacy" feel to them. Unfortunately, a stuffed journal or notebook often strains at its binding if you include lots of clippings or photographs, and the topics can become fragmented (say, continued over many places in one or more books).
If you're just starting out, and on a tight budget, I'd suggest getting a series of 5.5"x8.5" or A5 binders at your local office supply store --yes, that's the same size as the Classic/A5 D*I*Y Planner templates, half letter/A4-size. These vinyl non-descript black binders usually retail for about $4 USD each. While you're there, ask them to cut a 500-sheet package of full-size paper in half, so you have 1000 pages ready to use for your new system. You can certainly use full letter-size or A4 paper and binders, but you'll find that the extra size of the paper will tend to buckle the sheets unless the binders are quite full; also, many people find smaller sizes a little less intimidating in terms of both storage and maintenance. An added bonus: if you keep a Classic or A5-sized planner, you can write or otherwise fill up pages up while away, and simply file them into your commonplace once you get back.
Choosing a Method of Organising
Some people order their system alphabetically, so a set of A-Z books graces the shelves and works much like an encyclopedia of sorts. "A" could include architecture, automobiles, autism and Africa, for example. Others keep books ordered by general subject matter, so there might be one about automobiles, another about places to visit, another about family genealogy, etc.. They each have their benefits, but whichever one you choose, you should be prepared to stick with it. This will entail some advance planning and an examination of the topics you're likely to keep. If you are a very well-rounded person with a lot of varied interests on dozens or even hundreds of topics, the alphabetical route would probably prove best. If, however, you have mainly a dozen or so very specialised interests, and are unlikely to keep information outside of those areas, then a commonplace ordered by subject matter makes most sense.
The Importance of an Index
Whatever one is chosen, it's key to keep an index of topics as well.
The index book is generally kept in some sort of loose binding arrangement, allowing one to insert new pages as necessary, and is usually a semi-alphabetical listing of your topics. Why semi-alphabetical? Well, this isn't a computer, after all, and we can't just "insert" a new topic between others. In all likelihood, a new "C" topic will appear at the end of the current list of C topics. However, you'll probably find that as long as you have different sheets for each letter of the alphabet, you can easily scan the pages to find what you're looking for.
Another method, but one that works well for a lot of people, is keeping a card catalogue of your subjects. These are easy to keep in alphabetical order, and each time you add material, you just add to whatever subject card is appropriate. For this, you'll need to keep a card storage box (or two, or more) and a set of A-Z tabs.
The most important thing to remember about keeping an index, of course, is ensuring that it's up to date. That means that any time you add a new subject to your commonplace, you should update its index. If this is done at the same time, the effort is trivial. If not, the backlog can be intimidating.
Using Your Commonplace Book
Setting It Up
- Having decided on a system (loose-leaf or fixed), purchase your supplies. Besides the aforementioned books and paper, you should also ensure you have the following within easy reach, perhaps in a little storage case:
- Guillotine or scissors, for extracting your cuttings or trimming photographs
- Good-quality glue stick, preferably one that won't warp your pages (a strong dry glue)
- Tape and/or stapler, for certain types of content
- Hole-punch, if necessary, for punching sheets for binders
- Pens and pencils, so you don't fumble around and waste time looking for one
- A printer and a template ready to roll (preferably linked from your desktop) created in your favourite word processor, to the dimensions of your commonplace paper (see below)
- Loose paper to jot down important content while away from your commonplace, preferably stored in a planner or favourite notebook
- Decide upon how you want your system set up, alphabetically or by subject. If using loose-leaf, set up a binder for each one, primed with 20 or so pages. Label your binders or notebooks appropriately on the bindings in very legible print.
- Clear away the place of honour on your bookshelf. It should be easily reached, and in the same room where you're most likely to use it. Arrange your commonplace books in a logical order.
- Create a index for your books. If using an index book, create one page for each letter, and atop each page, simply write or print out "A", "B", "C", etc.. If using a card catalogue, set up your A-Z tabs and put a half-dozen cards in each letter.
- Put aside an afternoon or evening, and prime your system. Gather all those little important stickies, those index cards with cool quotes, that scanned photograph of your grandfather laying down the railway, a blank genealogical chart, a list of your past addresses, a print-out of your favourite inspirational poem, and so forth. Write or paste these into your book into the appropriate sections; for example, genealogy might be under "G" or it might be in the "Family" book, depending on how you have set up your system. Remember to grab a cup of tea or a glass of brandy, put on a little background music, and take your time to do it right. This should be a pleasurable experience, not a chore.
Using a Commonplace Book
An example might best illustrate how this could work. Let's say that one of the Baker Street Irregulars barged into the room with a little bit of news about the dealings of the nefarious Professor Moriarty.
- Take a look at the index and scan the "M" section to see if Moriarty is there. Let's see... Moran, Musgrave, Munro, ...Moriarty! Yes, there he is, in the fixed-leaf "M3" book, starting on page 35. (Obviously, we have many pages devoted to "M" topics, and have necessitated several books.)
- Take down M3 and jump to page 35. Sometimes data is fragmented. We see that pages 35-55 are on the subject of Moriarty, but another topic comes immediately after. No problem. The next available page is 67. At the end of the current Moriarty notes, we write "cont. p. 67", jump to that page, and start writing the new information.
- After we finish, we update the section on Moriarty in the index to mention the new pages: "Moriarty: M3, pp. 35-55, 67-". Since the information also concerns Colonel Sebastian Moran, we can also put a reference under his index entry, pointing to the page(s) in question.
- Note: If we were using a loose-leaf system, we could just insert more pages into the Moriarty section, adding page numbers to each one, and keeping the whole lot in alphabetical order. We might then put an entry under Colonel Moran as "M3: Moriarty, pp. 9-10". This system may take a little getting used to, but the good news is that we can rewrite pages if the formatting is done so badly that we find it difficult to locate material; after all, the index is loose-leaf. Index cards, of course, would get around some of these problems.
A Note About Digital Integration
There's absolutely no reason why one can't use digital tools for helping to maintain a commonplace book, especially is one is using a loose-leaf system. The easiest way is to create a template in your favourite word processor (or at least a blank document) with the page set up for the dimensions of your book: set your margins to 0.5" top and bottom, 0.75" left and right (to allow for rings and annotation). Link that template via a shortcut or alias to your desktop. When there's something you find digitally (say, online) that you wish to keep, simply click on the icon, launch your word processor, paste the text and/or pictures, and print. If more than one page, print odd and even pages separately to double-side your information, flipping the paper over and reinserting in between. (This might take some experimentation with your printer and print order, but the technique comes in quite handy.) Punch the paper, insert into your books, and update your index. Done.
By the same token, you can also set up a template using a DTP program like OpenOffice.org Draw. Paste photographs, diagrams, graphics and charts into it, annotate with text, place paragraph blocks for other writings, etc. Print and punch. Don't forget that you can aggregate content for the same topic. You might find six inspirational quotes on the same subject... why not put them all on one page and print?
As a side note, I've seen a small number of late 19th-century and 20th-century commonplace books have been managed with typewriters. When new text information was to be added to a page, the keeper just inserted the sheet into the typewriter, rolled down, and started typing. Don't get the impression that everything has to be hand-written, although this does tend to help one digest the material a little better, as well as give it a more personal touch.
Time and Focus
The quality of the product is ultimately the result of how much time and effort we want to pour into its creation. Nothing we create instantly --either with analog or digital tools-- is likely to be of any long-term, lasting value until we invest some sweat and thought into it, and a commonplace book is no exception. Take your time, work it lovingly and faithfully, and you'll find that over four centuries of users really did know a little something about gathering information and learning. Computer programmers didn't invent knowledge management, and in fact I wouldn't be remiss in arguing that nowadays we just have more access to instant but impractical information overloading our brains and distracting us from issues of importance. The keeping of a commonplace, although rooted in history, is just one way to get some of that focus back into our lives today.
Project: Start a Commonplace Book
by JAMIE
Creating a commonplace book can help you keep track of your educational journey. It’s a place to record favorite quotes from the books you read, ideas you have, and questions that arise from your studies.
Over time, your commonplace book will turn into a record of who you’ve been and how you’ve changed. You can use it to track the progress you’ve made and reflect on the thoughts that have shaped your life. This article will show you how to get started.
What is a Commonplace Book?
A commonplace book is essentially a scrapbook / compilation of information that the creator deems relevant. Commonplace books became popular with thinkers in 15th century England and were eventually promoted as a scholarly tool by major universities such as Yale and Harvard.
“Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books…
Such books were essentially books filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator’s particular interests.”
Personal commonplace books were used by many great writers and thinkers including John Milton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, and Mark Twain.
How Are Modern Commonplace Books Used?
You can, of course, put anything you want in a commonplace book. However, the advent of the internet has made it
rather unnecessary to copy down the facts and charts that were recorded in earlier times. Since such info is so readily available, many scholars now use their commonplace books solely as a place to record their intellectual pursuits.
One of the best ways to use a commonplace book is record your interactions with the books you read. Whether you’re studying the classics, devouring science volumes, or doing an in-depth investigation into a particular subject, a commonplace book can help you keep track of important quotes, respond to the text, make connections, and develop your own ideas.
In The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, Susan Wise Bauer explains the process of using a commonplace book while reading:
“The journal used for self-education should model itself after this extended type of commonplace book. It is neither an unadorned collection of facts, nor an entirely inward account of what’s going on in your heart and soul. Rather, the journal is the place where the reader takes external information and records it (through the use of quotes, as in the commonplace book); appropriates it through a summary, written in the reader’s own words; and then evaluates it through reflection and personal thought. As you read, you should follow this three-part process: jot own specific phrases, sentences, an paragraphs as you come across them; when you’ve finished your reading, go back and write a brief summary of what you’ve learned; an then write your own reflections, questions, and thoughts.”
Using a commonplace book in this way will add a new dimension of depth to your reading. Instead of being a static, one-sided activity, reading will become a dynamic experience.
In the article “Extraordinary Commonplaces,” Robert Darnton explains how keeping such a commonplace book changed the nature of reading for early autodidacts (and how it can change the way you read today):
“Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. . . It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. . .They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.” (The New York Review of Books, 2000)
Keeping a commonplace book will probably prevent you from passively skimming over the words in a book. You may not be able to read while lying down; but your understanding of the material is likely to increase by leaps and bounds.
How to Start a Commonplace Book
Creating a commonplace book is actually very simple. Remembering to take it off the shelf and add to your entries is the hard part.
Step 1: Choose Your Medium
Like journals, commonplace books vary. You can choose a blank, hard-bound book, a cheap spiral notebook, or a pricy moleskin book. Some people prefer to use a three-ring binder for their commonplace book so that pages can easily be added or removed.
Alternatively, you may prefer to create a digital commonplace book. Journaling software or even a word processing program will work. I keep my commonplace book (pictured here) on Microsoft’s OneNote, where I can create a new tab for each section.
If you don’t mind making your private thoughts public, you may choose to use a blog as your commonplace book. You can select your own domain and use a blogging platform such as WordPress. Or, you can make use Blogger to create a simple, no-cost blog. Step 2: Choose Your Content
Next, you’ll need to decide how to use your commonplace book.
As you’ve seen, commonplace books can be an excellent way to keep track of your reading. If you choose to use your book as a kind of reading log, you may want to include the following components:
- Lists of books to read
- Quotes from books you’re reading
- Book summaries in your own words
- Your reactions / thoughts about books you’ve finished
Remember that this is your book – you can choose to include anything that you want to remember or come back to. Here are some other things you may want to store in your commonplace book: favorite recipes, quotes from your favorite movies, a list of your heroes, life goals, poems, insights into life, travelogues, important photos, clippings from newspapers, etc.
Step 3: Choose an Organizational System
You may want to have separate sections for books lists, quotes, and other topics, or you may prefer to have all the information in one place. You can organize your commonplace book by adding dividers to your three ring binder, stick-on tabs to your notebook/moleskin, or links to your virtual book.
Decide how you want to organize your commonplace book before you begin writing. That way you won’t be frustrated when searching for entries as the book grows.
Step 3: Keep it Up
Once you’ve started a commonplace book, keep up the work. In a few years, you’ll have an amazing record the books you’ve read, the subjects you’ve studied, and the way your self-education has affected your life.
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Here some questions to get you startedon your Scholar Journal and some inspiring pictures to ignite your imagination:
Questions to get me started:
- “I wonder...”
- “Why”
- What connections can I make?
- What patterns do I see?
- What are the re-occuring themes?
- What is powerful about this?
- Why is this passage important to me?
- What truth have I learned from this?
- How can I become better after reading this?
- What reactions or opinions do I have about this?
