What is a blog? That was the question I was faced with at the beginning of the year when I was approached with the idea of having my students start blogging. What would they write about? Would they enjoy it? How in the world could I connect it to my curriculum? When would I find the time? And most importantly would it be worthwhile?
As the year quickly comes to an end, I find myself reflecting back on the new things I’ve tried with my students. Blogging was perhaps the biggest undertaking that I found myself most unsure of at the beginning of the year. It has had it’s problems, difficulties, and challenges but overall I feel it has proven to be not only beneficial to the students but also extremely enjoyable (At times I find myself putting off, oh..say…lessons plans and grading because I just HAVE to respond to the kid’s blogs)!
Some of the challenges I have faced with blogging begin with time! I assumed early on that the kids would naturally be drawn to just the idea of blogging in the beginning and that would be motivation enough (it wasn’t). I discovered that when left to their own devices (”Post when you can…”) they RARELY did! It wasn’t until I specifically set a requirement in place that each child needed to post at least one blog a week that I saw an increase in participation. It still wasn’t enough though and some kids always seemed to find themselves scrambling on Friday afternoons to get their weekly blog posted. The posts really started to increase when I set aside a specific time for the children to blog during the week and even more so when we arranged to have the COWS every Friday afternoon to work on blogging.
Initially, I worried about whether or not the kids would be able to find enough topics to write about, yet they haven’t seemed to struggle with this aspect of blogging. One real hurdle, however, was comments! I truly underestimated the difficulty of providing a high quality comment to the students blogs. If I had trouble with it, it should come as no surprise how much trouble the kids had! It took several lessons (and even still frequent reminders) about what a good comment should include. Just like writer’s workshop, the kids have learned that you should comment on something positive about the entry before offering suggestions for improvement. We also tried to get the kids to see that you need to explain the reasoning for the suggestion so that the writer understands how their choices affected the reader’s ability to understand the piece.
Blogging has also transfered into our Writer’s Workshop as well. I make it a point to respond to as many of the kids blogs as I can. They love receiving comments on their entries. I was surprised to see them start commenting to each others blogs using the same terminology that I was in my comments. That terminology then began transferring into the response groups during Writer’s Workshop as well. I giggle everytime I hear one of them say to another “You’re hot spot needs to be stretched out more” or “that language is very powerful!” and I have to ask myself just whose blog I posted that comment on anyway!
As the year quickly comes to an end, I find myself struggling with the idea that my “bloggers” will no longer be mine…and so have they. Several children have asked me if they will get to blog in 5th grade…and what if they don’t? I promised them that their blogs will be available for them and someone (myself, Mr. Mattson, their 5th grade teachers) will find the time to approve their posts and comment back to them.
I feel that blogging has given myself and the children a true purpose to our writing this year. It’s authentic-we are not just writing for a test, we are not just writing because it’s Writer’s Workshop and that’s what we do, we are not just writing and stuffing a published piece in a folder to sit there until the end of the year…we are writing because there are real people out there who are reading what we have to say and sharing with us what they think about it! I believe it has taken my students’ writing abilities up a notch and I definitely want to find a way to incorporate it into my writing program next year as well.
Has blogging been worthwhile…what do you think boys and girls? Check here to see their opinions!
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May 13th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Blogging is worthwhile. It gives the students an opportunity to express themselves and to receive feedback on those expressions. I think it does belong in the future at Edgemere, and I agree that having the COW scheduled during specific time frames helps a lot. I will definitely make it a point next year to establish a blogging time in my classroom during writing. Taking that one period a week and blogging instead of writing in a seed book or working on a piece will hopefully encourage next year’s fourth graders to want to write. I am already looking forward to it!
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