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.
This is so exciting, and it sounds like your goals of reading, writing, reflection and expression are being wonderfully met with blogging.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about asking the parents to commit to making one blog comment on a post per week? On someone other than their own kid? Maybe sometime, you might want to try the #comments4kids hashtag on twitter to get some outside comments, if you felt that was appropriate.
It has been exciting to see this grow. We do need to get parents commenting on what other students are writing. Through PLP I've connected with a 1st grade teacher in VA who is going to have her students comment on the 2nd grade animal posts. We've also had some 4th commenting on 3rd and will have 3rd commenting on 2nd. Judy and Heidi have already used Twitter to get some outside comments. The kids are enthused and some are posting on their own. Thanks for the encouragement!
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