Recently I have been working with my class on a class blog. I was not sure how this would evolve at the beginning of the year but I am amazed at what we have been able to do with it so far and the benefits to student learning. We started with simply going to the blog at eating time and exploring what was on our website so far. We have been and will continue to build on it throughout the year, so it was a good opportunity to explore. My teaching partner and I encouraged students to go home and add a comment about the day. We in turn, tried to add ideas we have been working on in class, or questions for students to begin commenting about. The response from some students was impressive. The confidence that it brought as well as voice and ownership shone through their comments. They enjoyed the conversation with us and asked questions that were on their minds when they got home. We were thinking, "this is powerful learning" but it gets better. As we learn along with our students, we have been able to have students adding comments to the blog during class. My hope and vision is that this becomes part of our daily life in our class community. The comments are now stretching to comment to each other, asking powerful questions and relating to one another with care and empathy. I stumbled upon this blog post on the ABC's of blogging and thought I would add it on as it has many points to what I think the benefits of kids blogging is.
The Benefits of Student Blogging (from A Fly on a Classroom Wall blog)
Authenticity – authentic writing for authentic audiences
Affordability - kidblog.org is for example is free
Builds confidence as students shine, share & respond
Carries across the curriculum
Collaborative discussions as students respond to & learn from one another
Communication skills – writing for an audience necessitates & builds effective communication skills
Connections between students & classes, between home & school
Develops higher order thinking skills (as students write, read, reflect & respond)
Digital Age – learning about, creating and leaving positive digital footprints
Digital Citizenship – students learn about proper etiquette & cybersafety
Editing skills development – undertaken in manageable, bite sized chunks
Facilitates constructive criticism
Focus
Flexibility
Fun!
Improves typing skills
Introduces, interjects & integrates technology into all subject areas
Learning styles are put into play that might not always otherwise be
Provides a medium within which to apply learning
Motivates independent writers & readers
Organic (not static)
Peer mentoring
Reading skills development
Reflective thinking / practice
Responsibility & awareness – provides an authentic opportunity to teach & monitor both
Sharing ideas, understanding, etc.
Student driven (teacher facilitated)
Writing skills development – skills include writing for meaning, organization, sentence structure, spelling, grammar, etc
We have been able to incorporate digital citizenship authentically into blogging as we go along this journey together. A site we have used is http://comments4kids.blogspot.com/. It has amazing videos of kids discussing digital citizenship and blogging tips such as how to leave a good comment. Our next leap - having students add posts to the class blog.
As I went through each of the general outcomes of Language Arts in the program of studies, I realized that blogging meets all of the general outcomes in some way and many of the specific outcomes under each general one.
I love having a class blog. We had worked on kidblogs last year and this helped prepare students for the next step this year. I am hoping as time goes on they will have their own pages with an active individual blog. It has brought forward student voice and ownership to learning. We are finding it very valuable to assess where the students are in their learning and what they are enjoying or not enjoying about school as well. I guess I can say the same about having my own blog - I have learned many things and been able to reflect on teaching in order to improve my teaching for students. Check out our blog at:
http://5mw.weebly.com/blog.html
Students would love to hear from you!
How do you increase voice and ownership of learning in your classroom?
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