I would like to set up blogs for my classroom and have each student tell us about their life. This will get the students ready for the real work when we use blogs in other content areas.
We are a third grade class so many of these concepts are very new to them. Teaching them about blogs with enhance this lesson by showing them how we use a blog. It will enhance other lessons by letting each student respond to a book talk without one person telling everything and others sitting in the back doing nothing.
Blogs remind me of a great quote I try to remember about my class "Those who are talking are doing the learning." If that is the teacher all the time, she is learning. If that is one student, that one is learning. If all are talking, all are learning.
Students will tell about their lives and then they can "talk" or respond to others blogs.
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One challenge you may encounter is the varying level of computer skills with 3rd grade students. Some students may have much more experience than others. What accomodations would you make to meet the needs of your students who lack computer skills?
ReplyDeleteHi Amy,
ReplyDeleteYour idea is an excellent get to know you activity for the beginning of the year. It honors students' cultural and linguistic diversity. The only concern I would have it how to keep this blog away from strangers. I would not want my child's information on the web for anyone to see. How could you prevent this from happening? Would you make this available for parents to see? I would be fascinated to read about a group of students in my daughter's class.
How much experience does your class have in using computers? Is there any blocks on using blogs with your students in your school district? I just had to submit a request with my school district to see if it was OK for me to start a classroom blog for my students to use.
ReplyDeleteA problem that I am having right now is getting the parents on board to allow for their children to use the blog at home. How would you pitch this idea to the parents? Also, depending on which district you are apart of, what happens if your students do not have access to the internet?
Great idea on your blog.
This sounds like a great idea Amy! May I suggest giving your students sentence starters as well as only a few life topics to write about. The idea of using a blog could be overwhelming enough without them thinking that they have to write their entire life story at one time. I also foresee that if you only make this an at-home assignment, that you will run into a lot of problems with the children having access to their computer for such a open assignment and then also with their knowledge of how to navigate the sites. I would suggest teaching with heavy modeling, how to sign in, how to post, etc. and then having the students do their first attempt with blogging, in school. A follow up assignment once you have built their confidence of having them log on and respond to another few questions or sentence starters could be cool! Then you could even take it as far as to have them respond to other people's work, once you have taught a lesson on how to do so and what responses are appropriate. Overall, I like the creativity and motivation you showed in attempting this with third graders!
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your suggestions and your ideas! I love being able to talk with people who don't think I am crazy for trying to add these things into my classroom. When talking with people in school, they look at me with wide eyes and no comments.
ReplyDeleteI will try blogging at school first and will try it through a wiki so that only people part of the wiki can see and interact with us. I might move on to other blog sites once I see how it works in the classroom.
Thanks again!