<p>My two Ss hated writing their reading journals because they were asked to avoid plot summaries–which they could do very well–, and instead discuss their reactions to the readings–which they disliked. But this may be a boy thing.
In 7th and 8th grades, they had many, many writing assignments for both humanities and social studies (often combined). and these assignments were quite varied. Some involved research and were in the nature of expository writing, others involved writing poetry, or writing the scripts for the parts they would play in a performance that was tied to what they were studying.
If your D likes reading, ask her to write book reports. If she does not know how to start, ask her to tell you what’s in the book, what she thinks about it, what questions she has about the story, characters, etc… and then ask her to write what she told you down. This would end up being like a reading journal but would have a bit more structure.
You can do the same with newspaper articles. My S/s 7/8 teacher had a weekly assignment whereby students chose a newspaper article to write about.
Another possibility would be for your daughter to interview someone, perhaps a relative or older person in the community and write down the interview. In 8th grade, my S interviewed an elderly Chinese lady who’d come as a bride in an arranged marriage, had worked most of her life in a Chinese laundry, but had put her sons through MIT.
Basically, use any excuse to get her to write.</p>