Last year I used kidblog.org for my students blogs. They wrote about their math learning and about projects we did in math class. Occasionally they chose a topic. I am not an ELA teacher so I wanted them to use their blogs as reflective journals. Here is their work from last year http://plnaugleclasswiki.wikispaces.com/Blogs.
This year I will be doing basically the same thing. The students love blogging and I use #comments4kids on Twitter to get lots of comments. Happy blogging everyone.
I live in the South, so no upcoming school year for me, just the second part. I posted for my students during the first term, and only one of them showed interest in posting. This last term I'm planing to engage them all in posting. I don't have access to computers at school, this is a drawback. Anyway I'll try. I still have to think HOW.
I'm so sorry that you don't have computer access at school. It is great, however, that you were able to get one student to blog from home. Do all of your students have internet access at home?
A great motivator for our students was the blogging audience. When we had other students, teachers, and people from around the world comment on their blogs, it made the students want to write more. The Clustr map was a great motivator too. They loved watching it grow and grow.
Darren Draper > Christine SouthardJuly 31, 2007 at 1:13am
I've seen Clustr maps to be great motivators, as well. The kids want to check the map first thing.
I agree with you, audience IS a great motivation. Writing for the teacher is not very encouriging, writing for a bigger audience makes more sense. I'll bear that in mind for the second term.
Replies
Hi Christine,
Last year I used kidblog.org for my students blogs. They wrote about their math learning and about projects we did in math class. Occasionally they chose a topic. I am not an ELA teacher so I wanted them to use their blogs as reflective journals. Here is their work from last year http://plnaugleclasswiki.wikispaces.com/Blogs.
This year I will be doing basically the same thing. The students love blogging and I use #comments4kids on Twitter to get lots of comments. Happy blogging everyone.
A great motivator for our students was the blogging audience. When we had other students, teachers, and people from around the world comment on their blogs, it made the students want to write more. The Clustr map was a great motivator too. They loved watching it grow and grow.