At first thought, the lesson that would get the most legs out of using a blog in my classroom would be Teaching 6-Traits of Writing, a very hands on, involved exercise for students with a good amount of actual writing involved. The blog would serve as a writing tool giving peers the ability to edit, giving each student the ability to reflect on their original piece and absorb the feedback from their peers. This blog would also be a wonderful and powerful way for parents to become more involved with their child's writing. It will be such a good use of technology.
A blog supporting these lessons gives students an opportunity to interact about content amongst themselves or with the teacher, and it also acts as a showcase for their work, giving them a sense of pride when it's a job well done.
There are so many ways in which a blog can enhance the lesson. It is an opportunity for students to review other students' pieces of writing, respond to, edit or polish writing pieces, see their own growth, as well as that of their fellow students. This gives students a real full audience other than just a teacher. They can ask questions for clarification, other students can ask them questions about their writing and they can all share ideas to stimulate even more growth.
For a 7th Grade Language Arts teacher, a blog is a good tool for organizing and implementing instructional context. Blogging can promote interaction as well as critical, creative, intuitive, and analytical thinking. It can be a powerful median for increasing access and exposure to quality information. It bodes well for our use of technologies in the classroom. It allows the involment of parents and demands interaction, a most powerful source of growth.
Hello! I agree when you say blogging can promte interaction between your students. Blogging can be a very useful tool. The one thing that we need to rememeber as educators, is that not all of our students will have access to the Internet at home. For example, only 80 percent of our student population has Internet access at home. This makes it difficult to have students do required "blogging". How do/would you handle this type of situation?
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a very good point. At our school we send home a letter the first week of school asking parents if they have access to a computer and the internet. The very few students who do not have a computer we allow them time after school to work on the assignment. Most the time it is those students who need the extra support anyway and therefore is a win win situation for student and teacher. Also, this is a good way to make sure that ALL students are getting the technology knowledge they need.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of having students do their peer editing through a blog! This is a wonderful way to apply such an interactive piece of technology. I see that the challenge of what to do about students that do not have internet access at home has been addressed, which was the first challenge that I thought about with this use of a blog. Another challenge would be how to manage the criteria for the assignment being completed successfully, and how to encourage constructive editing. I imagine that this is a challenge with 7th graders no matter the medium for completing the task, though. One good way of handling that could be through a very clearly outlined checklist-style assignment sheet, which included things such as, "I made a positive suggestion to my classmate for the mistake(s) I found".
ReplyDeleteJoy,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! Is your after school help sort of like a after school tutoring program as well? That is a great way of reaching out to all of your students!
You are absolutely right, there are many ways in which a blog can enhance a lesson. Our job as educators is to make sure we implement the ones that best serve our kids. I love the idea of of using the blog as a place where students can evaluate and respond to their peers, my only concern is how do we differentiate our instruction to insure that those students whom feel they are not good writers or typist are able to the see their growth.
ReplyDeleteTrina thank you for your concerns about peer editing. Peer editing is taught the first half of the school year through Daily Oral Language, a teacher's guide to helping and showing hands on editing skiils through daily warm ups. This also includes having students learn proper symbols to use for: capitalization, grammar, punctuation, abbreviations, spelling, and sentence fragments. By having students practice this daily they are capable of editing their own and their classmates composed work by the second half of the year.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth that is a great question, Fortunately our school has scheduled our teacher's eight hour day with a forty-five minute after school "tutorting" designed for any and all students who need extra help or need to take a make-up test etc. During this time ALL teachers are required to stay and this allows for us to offer those students without computers to stay after without the feeling of punishment. It has worked wonderfully for both student and teacher.
ReplyDeleteJon-Paul you bring up a very good question and one that can be very sensitive for students who do not find themselves as good writers. My answer to your concern would be that I would definitely group my students based on their writing skills. The great thing about blogging is that even though they will be separated into different leveled "peer editing" groups they can still read ALL of their classmates work. From reading all or most of the other students' work, they can model their future work after that of the more skilled writers whose work they were able to sample. If the student isn't a very good typer, I will encourage them to practice as much as they can at home. If they don't have a computer at home then I will at least know they are getting practice in my classroom when typing their assignments through their blog sites.
ReplyDeleteHi Joy,
ReplyDeleteI really like you ideas of using peer interaction for commenting and editing student work. However, would their be some students that would be reluctant to share their work, not only with the entire class, but also other members of our community, and any other visitors to the blog. Some students may not have the confidence to not have the academic confidence to put it up in front of too many people. To accommodate those students, I feel giving them user names giving them anonymity would give them the security of they would need to share their work. Hopefully of time, they would overcome their inadequacy through the improvement they would gain from their blogging experience.
Hi Joy, I had to repost. I was typing way too fast and did not bother to proof read it till now. So here it goes.
ReplyDeleteHi Joy,
I really liked you ideas of using peer interaction for commenting and editing student work. However, some students may be reluctant to share their work with the entire class as well as with anybody else entering that site. These students may not have the academic confidence to put it up in front of too many people. To accommodate those students, I feel giving them user names provide them anonymity thus giving them the security they would need to share their work. I hope that in time, they would overcome their feelings of inadequacy through the improvement they would gain from their blogging experience.
Hi Joy,
ReplyDeleteYou raise a valid point in that the students will gain a great deal from the blogging experience. The fact that students can view all post and support each other will serve to support the desired end result which is to grow as writers and critical thinkers .