My original idea was to use a classroom blog with my third grade class to enhance what we were already doing in class. I set up a blog using word press and used it with my class for three weeks. Then our statewide standardized PAWS testing started and we have not blogged for the last three weeks. Before the break, I had tried a lot of different types of responses for the students to try and even let them (through the blog) set up an account for a serious game and a virtual world. The virtual world was a huge hit, and spun off into the third graders wanting to research historical figures that they "met" int he virtual world.
Tuesday, when we return to school from spring break, I am hoping to start the third graders blogging using the steps I have found in an International Reading Association's publication The Reading Teacher, to blog from here on out. The steps are: bolster background, prime the pump, continue the conversation, and make multiplicity explicit. These steps pair with a reading curriculum nicely and even have the students doing some informal research before they discuss with each other.
We are going to do this phase of the project over reading about the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. I have taught about this before through great books and am excited to move the conversation to a blog and to let the students do some research on their own as well. I hope that the guidelines i set up during our previous blogging will carry over. I found that the blog was getting more like an instant message board and want to move away from that. We will see what happens, if anything it should be very interesting to see where the third graders go with this!
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As you know, I am also doing a blog with my third graders. I understand your troubles with them sounding like instant messages. I am going to have to do more modeling when we start up again and hopefully I can get them past the short comments.
ReplyDeleteI had to ban comments in a sternly disciplined fashion. They became a distraction widget. I opened an internet safety unit behind their behavior and a unit on being aware how public email and blogs are and what is good manners.
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