The use of a work diary or journal in a Montessori class, is one of the tools that helps to establish a balance between freedom and responsibility. The child records the work they are doing each day, the presentations they have had and other work they have followed up on. The children use different coloured pencils to record presentations (red) and editing conferences (green), to help them easily identify the presentations they have had and how frequently they are writing and editing their work. The work diary is maintained throughout the year and used in conjunction with the work conference (See Artefact 2-B). The aim of the work diary is manifold: in the short term it can help the child to choose work and identify lessons to practise; in the longer term it can help them develop a reflective approach to learning by being able to look back through a long period of time to gain a sense of what they have accomplished and how they have matured in their learning. It can also be used to objectively assess the balance of work a child is completing over time, and identify areas that are perhaps lacking.

When children are first introduced to using a work diary they learn how to record the date in long format. Combined with presentations on time and the calendar, even this simple step helps the child to understand and learn the days of the week and months of the year and relate it to their daily experience. It also offers the child a chance to regularly practise handwriting, and is a quick measure of their progress in this area over time. Once children are recording the date each day, they then move onto recording the lessons they are presented in addition to the date. Once this step is mastered, children will then begin to record all work they practise during the daily work cycles.

The next stage is for the child to record the time of day they begin each piece of work or presentation, which requires competence in reading and writing the time. This will eventually enable them to analyse the time they spend on different learning areas and kinds of work. When analysing their work, they need to exercise a range of skills as they categorise the types of work they have completed, grouping activities into the categories and then adding the time spent in each of the different categories over a period of time. This will enable them to reflect on the balance of work being done in the class and to monitor time spent working to make sure that over the course of a term, no areas are neglected. The children may also use work category and time data to make a graph to represent this data in an easy format to interpret and reflect on how they are spending their time. It also provides an opportunity for the child to build skills with visual representation of data and graphing of data that is personally meaningful and informative.