For awhile now I've wondered how successful blogging would be in lower school. I read a lot of class blogs, but that wasn't what I was looking for, so I found a few teachers at my school who were willing to give blogging a try. We started slowly with one second grade class, and now we have a third and fourth grade class blogging and commenting. The first grade teachers may join with a class blog, but they thought individual posts would be too much for some of their students. The three teachers who are doing this with me have taken time to learn about blogging themselves and read some of the 6 part series on the Langwitches Blog. We started with a prompt or topic for the students to write about, and allowed them to comment on several posts. Then we looked at the comments and talked about what made a good comment and why? One of the second graders said, "It's like talking to my friends anytime I want to."
Only one class has opened the posts up and let the students write about anything that interested them, but they were the first class to blog. Third grade is using it to get feedback and help with their poetry writing. The teacher also wants to use the blog as a way for the students to reflect on the unit. Our 4th graders are just beginning, and enjoyed their first time last week.
We haven't had much feedback from the parents yet, but one parent liked the 3rd grade blog and was glad the students' posts were focused on a topic for school. While it was nice to hear, we want the student blogs to be a mixture of educational reflection and thinking as well as individual expression.
I'm hoping we will have the classes reading and commenting on each other's posts soon. We are all learning about this together.
