Thing 02: Student Blogging & Writing

Student blogging seems cool.  Like, wow.

I currently teach 2nd grade, so I'm struggling with how this might fit into my day, but I love the idea.  My students have so much to say, and they are ELL's, so I feel like this would be such a "real" avenue for writing for them.  I'm actually excited.

I read all of the "read these first" articles, and I found them interesting/helpful.  They made sense to me.  One of my take aways was to use Weebly, so I immediately went to that site and set up accounts for my students and created a home page (talk about putting the cart before the horse!). 

Another take away I had was start by writing a topic on chart paper and have the students respond with sticky notes, I love that (cool right?).  I actually love that so much that we might do that for a while.  My struggle is, with my students being second graders and ELL's, I really have to work in very small groups to help with spelling.  But then I figured that most second grade teachers would have that problem.

Then I read another article (I've been working, reading and thinking for a few days).  Another article was a 5th grade teacher's step by step journey into blogging.  This teacher has her (his?) students create their blog in a google doc that gets worked on throughout the week, the teacher and student work together and edit it, then the teacher publishes it on Friday.  That was mind blowing to me.  In my head, I thought my students were on a device and just randomly blogging, but I liked the control this offered, and the editing potential.  All I can think about is how "language rich" this sounds.

Blogging is great because it's that missing piece I've been looking for, the voice and the publishing that the students need and crave; making for purposeful writing for an audience.  This 5th grade teacher also tweeted out her students blogs and shared them; people retweeted them and commented, then she would share with her students.  I found that very interesting (I know I like it when people comment and communicate with me). 

So now my journey begins...I'm excited...(we'll see how far I get).