I have recently discovered blogs for myself, and today I have been exposed to various ways that blogs can be utilized in the classroom. I would love to see my students having the opportunity to participate in such a collaborative community of learners.
I currently teach 4th grade language arts and social studies and I think that a blog would be a really neat tool to use for either one of these content areas, or both! If I set up a blog for my classroom it would be used to give my students the opportunity to communicate and interact with each other about the content of the class. I would also like to see it be used as an online journal of sorts for the students to respond to questions that I would post or to simply share their thoughts with each other. This would enable the students to challenge each other in positive ways and would allow them to express themselves both factually and creatively.
Having a blog for my class would also allow me to occasionally comment back to them or challenge them to think further on specific topics. I also see that this would be a great way to communicate more specifically on assignments and offer more feedback to my students.
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Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI think that it would be a great idea to have them do an online journal. They could do them anywhere there is an internet connection which is just about everywhere now. One good thing that you could do would be to critique their writing and they could make corrections on the same blog. You could also have the students critique the other students writings by just having the students log in under a GUEST. That way they would not know whom is writing the blog.
Mike
Hi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI am a special education teacher for the sixth grade. This year many teachers have set up blogs on their web pages. Typically you can find some type of blog in math, literature, social studies, or science. They also use writing prompts like you suggested using with your classroom as well. Our students are motivated with these assignments and it encourages them to practice and learn writing techniques. Most importantly they enjoy this activity and they are willing to take more risks and apply themselves more because they are responding in a way that is meaningful to them.
Maybe you can use these blogs by students as a resource in tracking their skills in writing.
Having students reply to prompts/questions sounds like a good idea. Would you have the students in groups or as a whole class? If students are responding to each other also, a whole class discussion may become a little confusing. Your statement about them responding to each other both "factually and creatively" is important. Keeping that in mind and reminding students of the blog's purpose would keep it from becoming a place just to "chat". :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great ideas! I like the idea of tracking writing skills from the blog. I think that logging in as a guest to comment on another student's work would be a great way to have more student involvement! I will probably start by having the students work on this as a whole group, and then proceed to small groups from there once they are comfortable with it.
ReplyDeleteRachel,
ReplyDeletePresently my 4th grade class (I teach all subjects) has a website that the school district subscribes to for each school and the teachers. I use mine to make general announcements such as tests, due dates, filed trips, etc. The software has many features that I have not ventured into yet. One of these is the ability to set up email and blogs with your students. We have just started a novel and often I drown in grading journals. I enjoy reading their journals but there are often a few I just can't read! Using blogs instead would definately help with this. Also there would be no more lugging around all the journals. Blogging will still give the students the ability to write creativily on their thoughts and will also allow for them to enhance their technology skills. I am looking forward to using blogs in this way in the weeks to come. Another way I am looking into using blogs in my classroom is to get my students involved in some sort of "penpal" program. I seems like we have a lot of the same ideas for our classrooms! I hope the ideas turn out nicely for us!
Rachel, I do like your idea of having the blogs used as an online journal, my students are 7th and 8th grade and we write journals every morning. It seems to them to have no purpose. Maybe using the computer and them having an interactive conversation will improve their writing. thanks for idea.
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