5 Rewards of Teaching Young Students to Blog
I have been an elementary-school teacher for more than 25 years and I am always on the lookout for meaningful ways to engage and motivate my young students. I started Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog in 2008 with the idea of sharing class activities with parents. Over time, the blog has grown to be the centerpiece of our third-grade classroom. It has become a true global learning community that offers myriad rewards for students, parents and teachers. 1) Develop quality literacy skills When I first started blogging, I thought the posts would be the primary focus of the blog. My students are highly motivated by their authentic global audience and take great pride in producing top-notch writing for their readers. What has been even more exciting for me is the student participation from home. 2) Parents are included in the learning Parental involvement has strengthened and expanded the learning opportunities for my class. Many parents work but would love to volunteer in some way.
Fix-It in Five
When I first started student blogs, I assumed students would enjoy it. After all, we were using technology! It was, at the time, a cutting-edge tool! Unfortunately, I didn’t think ahead of time about the power of blogging as authentic, interactive form of expression. Instead, students wrote posts in isolation. In short, they weren’t student blogs at all. Student autonomy. Looking for More? If you enjoyed this post, check out this free resource Student Blogging: Rubric, Self-Assessment, and Checklist If you want to see more posts about student blogging and digital writing, check out this page for other posts and resources.If you enjoy this blog, please subscribe via email and receive each post in your inbox, along with one free resource a week.If you're interested in workshops or sessions on digital writing and student blogging, I'm available to consult with schools, districts and organizations.
The True Adventures of an Incurably Curious Educator
Why Are You Blogging? [Guest Post]
You hear that all teachers should blog. You follow the tutorials and set up a blog. Now what? It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the idea of blogging, especially if you are unclear about the purpose of the blog. Is the blog for you or for students and parents? This post highlights the most prevalent types of education blogs and includes links to blogs that exemplify each of the types. A Blog is Not Just a Blog A single classroom blog may exist for many reasons. personal reflection on teaching and learningcommunication between you, parents, students, and the worldexhibition of student workrecommendation of resources to other teachers Student blogs also vary. ongoing reflection on lessons, work, or projectsportfolios of work for parents, friends, and the worldstudents’ exploration of interests or passions When you clarity the purpose behind your blog, you begin thinking differently about your practice. Below are some examples of blogs that illustrate clear purposes. Google “the resume is dead”.
Mr. Salsich's Class - “Take Me Out to The Ballgame” – a guest post about baseball by Brendan
Hi! My name is Brendan and I play Baseball. Baseball is an American sport involving lots of physical requirements like being able to run fast, swing heavy bats, and have good arm strength to be able to throw across the baseball field. The field you play on in baseball is called the baseball diamond and in the baseball diamond there’s an infield and an outfield. Here’s a diagram of a baseball diamond and the defensive positions I made using Skitch: layout of a baseball field, with the positions. The clothing you wear for baseball is baseball pants, team jersey, baseball hat, cleats, and baseball socks. When you play defense you also need a baseball glove: Fielding Equipment When you are hitting you need a baseball bat and a helmet: Batting Equipment There is also a dugout which is where the players sit during a game. Some people in my class play baseball. My favorite Baseball team is the Boston Red Sox. Boston Red Sox Here is a video of my class and I singing the song: Do you play baseball?
Home - Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog
7 Reasons Your Students should be Blogging in 2013
One of the best things about blogging in the classroom is that it is a cross-curricular activity that can be used to teach any subject and develop just about any skills, from reading and writing to math, geography and everything in between. If you are still unsure about how blogging can benefit your students, here are seven reasons that might be able to persuade you as a teacher to get on board with blogging in the classroom this year. Blogging motivates students to read and write The best way to get students to read and write is to offer them things that they are interested in reading and writing about – things that relate to them and their peers. Blogging gives students a larger audience As a teacher, it is your duty to grade and critique the work of a student, but getting a second, third or fiftieth opinion never hurts either. Blogging gives students confidence Blogging enables students to create a virtual portfolio Blogging allows teachers to discover a student’s true talents
Four Good Ways to Use Media In Your Classroom Blog
Watching videos and commenting on them or looking at a picture and commenting on it are the most common ways that teachers have students use media in blog posts. There is definitely value in those activities as they do get students to think, write, and share. These are some other ways to think about using media in your classroom blog. SoundCloud is a great tool for creating short audio recordings. Those recordings can be embedded into blog posts. The feature of SoundCloud that makes it worth using instead of just embedding a recording from another service is that listeners can tie their comments to an exact moment in a SoundCloud recording. ThingLink is a free tool for creating interactive images. VoiceThread and Narrable provide platforms for uploading images and hosting discussions around them. Your classroom blog doesn’t have to be serious all the time.
