In September, my cooperating teacher and I will begin our journey into blogging with our third-grade class.
Our first language arts unit, Launching the Reading and Writing Workshop, is a great place to begin blogging. Our authentic learning unit is based on the idea that we all need to become better readers and writers because it will impact our lives, whether we want to be astronauts, professional athletes, or anything else. The task is to create a guide to becoming either a better reader or writer and share it on our blog. The guide can take many forms: a poster, an essay, a poem, a graphic with captions, or another expression. Students will type or otherwise digitize their guide, and I will post it while they observe. Students will take on the responsibility to post directly to the class blog later in the school year.
Blogging will create a felt-need for students to do their best work. Richardson (2010) found that the additional audience provided by public media stimulates students to consider their work more carefully. When students know that other students around the world, as well as their parents, past and future teachers, and others will see their work, they feel it is of greater importance. Mills and Exley (2014) found that students using blogging and other educational technology spent more time on the technology initially, but in the end spent a greater amount of time on the writing. Blogging has many educational benefits.
Two of the most important benefits are that students are more engaged in the work that will be on the blog and gives them a voice to improve themselves and the world around them. Our class blogging meets ISTE (2016) standards by using technology to make students empowered learners (#1) and knowledge constructors (#3). Our plan for blogging meets ISTE (2008) standards for teachers #1 to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity and #2 design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments.
I am a regular ed teacher team teaching with a special education teacher. We will have 20 third grade students, almost half of whom have learning disabilities. Several have poor executive function skills compared to their peers.
Follow my journey into learning as we begin blogging by posting ideas on how to be a better reader or writer.
References
International Society for Technology in Education. (2016). Standards for students. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students-2016
International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/for-students
Mills, K. A., & Exley, B. (2014). Time, Space, and Text in the Elementary School Digital Writing Classroom. Written Communication, 31(4), 434-469. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1177/0741088314542757
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.) [Kindle Edition]. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
I think your idea for how to get students engaged into blogging sounds really fun! It is a great way to integrate what you are already doing in class into the blogging world. You said that later in the year you would allow students the responsibility of posting directly to the class blog. How are you thinking about scaffolding the passing of this responsibility over to them? Perhaps students could work in small groups at first and then eventually post individually.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great idea to use small groups before moving to individuals. Thanks!
DeleteYour ideas sound great on allowing students to express themselves in many different ways! I love how students are taking charge of their learning in this project by creating a guide for what they are supposed to know. I have tried similarly broad projects in the past, where students could choose what to create. The challenge I found was how to grade and time manage the completion of each project. A student could write a quick poem and claim done, while another student's graphic takes days. You could overcome these challenges by creating a broad rubric of what needs to be included, and sharing it with the students throughout the process. Deadline checklists for benchmarks would help students stay on track. Best of luck in your blogging adventure!
ReplyDeleteSara Grimes
http://techy5thgrade.edublogs.org/
Sara, I agree completely that specific rubrics are necessary for the end product so students understand the parameters. We do not grade ongoing projects as we provide support throughout. Instead students can be assessed using a transfer task which is similar to the original, but is very specific and can be completed in 30-60 minutes. Thanks so much for your feedback.
ReplyDelete