Our Essential Question in writing this year is “What makes our writing worth reading?”
This summer I taught a workshop held at Harvard University. I shared my experience as a teacher who blogs with a classroom full of children. During that time I was exploring the idea of having students create their own classroom blog pages, where they would be able to find their own voice as writers.
I spent time on numerous classroom sites, and I found amazing examples of student blogs. Two of my faves:
* I’m a big fan of Mrs. Cassidy from Canada – whose first graders each have his or her own blog: http://bit.ly/3t5MP .
* Mr. Ahlness in Seattle has his 3rd graders blogging away… http://bit.ly/svkss6
One morning, I squeezed in a 15 minute lesson in the Lab. I showed students where to find our new KidBlog link, and how to log in. That’s all we had time for (much to everyone’s disappointment!) That night, I arrived home to find 4 blog posts already! Students were choosing topics, and leaving comments for each other without my having done any specific teaching. The train had left the station, so to speak!
Since then, we have not been in the computer lab. Fortunately, I’ve had many opportunities in the classroom to review blogging safety, etiquette and composing quality posts.
All posts and comments filter through my email – so none show up on the class blogs unless I’ve approved them. Some posts aren’t quite finished, so they remain in moderation. Some comments aren’t meeting our expectations, so they sit in limbo. We are learning and growing together.
“What makes our writing worth reading?” We are finding the answer to that question, one post at a time. Have your child show you our KidBlogs page, and feel free to jump in, too!
Did you know our blog allows you to see into the future? This rubric will be in your future - it's a way to keep track of how well you are hitting our blogging targets. It's from Scholastic and I think it's perfect-ish!
What’s to Come:
🙂 Thank you for the cranberry donations – we had a super day celebrating all things related to Massachusetts’ native berry.
🙂 This week is the Scholastic Book Fair, to benefit our PTO. Students will be able to preview the sale tomorrow, and create a wish list. Students can bring money with them to shop at school, or you can bring your child during the extended hours.
🙂 I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break. A full week of school = a normal homework week. There’s a certain comfort to be found in predictable routines.
Smile Wide,
Mrs. Brooks
Sunday night's sunset - what a beautiful way to wrap up the weekend!
Monday's Sunset - made sitting in all that traffic worth it...
LOVE the Five video!!!
Hi Mrs. Brooks and 3rd Graders.
I really enjoyed reading about how you are creating and assessing your own blogs. You raise an interesting issue with your question, “what makes our writing worth reading”? Recently, I got a very good piece of advice that I thought I would share. A great blog post should read like a great story. In other words, it should:
1. Have a beginning, a middle, and an end
2. Something should really HAPPEN – not just a list of events in chronological order
3. A reader should feel as though they have discovered something or someone by the end of the post
I hope this helps!
Dear Beth,
Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment on our blog. Your advice is very helpful to us as we have just started figuring out how to blog – so far we have really only spent one computer class in the lab giving it a try.
In our writing – we are working on personal narratives and it’s funny how you mention the advice you gave. We are trying to do some of the same things in our personal narratives. We are finding it to be very tricky so far in third grade, but we know we’ll be awesome by the time June rolls around…
Thanks again for stopping by and for your helpful comments. Stay tuned!
Your friend,
Suzy and all of her budding bloggers.
Hi Suzy and Bloggers.
Have you ever played with the Bio Cube? I used this with my students – and even myself!
http://www.readwritethink.net/classroom-resources/student-interactives/cube-30057.html
Have fun!
Beth
Hi Beth! I’ve checked out Bio Cube a few times – it is so very cool. We do a HUGE unit at the end of the year on Massachusetts-themed biographies. Students create a IIM written report, and a monologue script to memorize for the famous person they research. I’d love to include the Bio Cube as part of that whole programming…. Thanks for the reminder!
When are you coming to visit?
Suzy
Maisie is having trouble logging onto her blog. She did just try it, did anything post? Let me know, thanks, Annie
Hi Annie,
She’s all set – it has to arrive in my e-mail, and then I have to approve it. It all depends on how spiffy I am and how complete the topic is.
You should be able to see it, now…..
Thanks!
Suzy