I've been trying all year to get my administration to allow me to open a blog for classroom use, but have been unsuccessful (unless I want to use Moodle). However, if I were to have a blog for my fourth grade students, I would begin by having it as a place where students could post responses to writing prompts (Richardson, 2009). This would be a place where my students could post their prompts and receive feedback from their peers and parents. A writing blog would allow interaction between parents and children as well as provide the students with an authentic purpose and audience for writing, which in turn enhances and encourages more writing. Students would be expected to post to a weekly prompt and respond to someone else's prompt during the week by providing a "glow and grow." The "glow" would be pointing out something their classmate did well, and the "grow" would be a recommendation for a change to make the piece better.
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
I love the "glow" and "grow" idea! Would you require the students to do this writing at home or at school? If your classroom is as busy as mine is, I could see time being a problem. Do you have enough computers and time throughout the day to allow each student to get on the computers several times during the week to make their postings and responses?
ReplyDeleteMany of my students have computers with Internet access at home, but not all. Until everyone is comfortable with blogging, I may reserve the computer lab at the middle school (we are connected by a hallway)so we can all use it at once. I also have five laptop computers in my classroom that the students cycle through each day for about fifteen minutes. Instead of using StudyIsland every day, students could spend two of their days blogging and three days for StudyIsland.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have a great plan for what you are expecting from your students and how you are going to apply blogging to your classroom. Our students use Study Island as well, so I think blogging would give them a great break from that. Best of luck!
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