Amy-first of all I am completely jealous of your photo in front of "la tour eiffel"!! It's my goal to visit Europe in the next five years. As for keeping your students accountable by having them post their writing in a blog is an awesome idea! For many students writing is intimidating and writing in blog might just be the remedy for "graphophobia" -fear of writing.
How are you going enforce the authenticity of students' blog entries?
Amy, I never thought about using a blog for a bell ringer activity. What a great way to get students focused and working at the beginning of class. I can see them anticipating what the topic of disucssion will be for that day and being excited to log in. It would be interesting to see how you would logistically set up the blog as far as having students respond to each others post. I know that I have used Bell Ringers for the first five minutes of class which doesn't provide a lot of time for reading and responding. Maybe you would have to schedule it so that alternating students post one day and respond to posts the next? Also the logistics of making sure that each student has access to a computer in each of your classes. Is this a possibility for you? If so that is fantastic! If not maybe you could make it a weekly thing or whenever you get computer time. I can definitely see how this would increse the energy and learning in your classroom once students got the hang of how to do it. Great idea, thanks for sharing.
Amy, warmups/bellringer are good ideas for blog use. If you put more on the students with the responses, they might be more accountable. When peer interact and respond to one another, it sometimes has more impact than just an assignment handed out by the teacher. How often would you incorporate this into your lessons?
I think the responses will also add to their knowledge base. Students would gain insight and content from peer responses. This could help in retention and better conenctions when leading to summative assessments.
I think that is a wonderful idea about having them respond to a writing prompt. But, do you have enough computers to make this realistic? Or will it take them a long time to do this resulting in people waiting around for a computer to use. I think that knowing that their parents have access to things that they do daily will motivate them into putting more effort into an assignment. Almost like Big Brother if their parents were followers of this blog then in real time they could see what their child is learning.
Would the students have access to computers at school? Or do they have computers at home? I ask this because I teach at a school where students do not have access to computers at home. Also how many periods of 7th grade history do you teach, would you select one class to do this or all the classes?
Thank you for visiting my blog! In answering your questions...I have 25 computers in my classroom so each student is guaranteed individual computer access--that is why I can see the usage of blogging working so well in my classroom! :) I would probably begin using blogs 1 time every week to see how well it worked then probably increase to 2-3 times a week. I believe it would depend on the cooperation from the students and possibly Honors vs. Regular classes.
Amy-first of all I am completely jealous of your photo in front of "la tour eiffel"!! It's my goal to visit Europe in the next five years.
ReplyDeleteAs for keeping your students accountable by having them post their writing in a blog is an awesome idea! For many students writing is intimidating and writing in blog might just be the remedy for "graphophobia" -fear of writing.
How are you going enforce the authenticity of students' blog entries?
Amy,
ReplyDeleteI never thought about using a blog for a bell ringer activity. What a great way to get students focused and working at the beginning of class. I can see them anticipating what the topic of disucssion will be for that day and being excited to log in.
It would be interesting to see how you would logistically set up the blog as far as having students respond to each others post. I know that I have used Bell Ringers for the first five minutes of class which doesn't provide a lot of time for reading and responding. Maybe you would have to schedule it so that alternating students post one day and respond to posts the next? Also the logistics of making sure that each student has access to a computer in each of your classes. Is this a possibility for you? If so that is fantastic! If not maybe you could make it a weekly thing or whenever you get computer time.
I can definitely see how this would increse the energy and learning in your classroom once students got the hang of how to do it. Great idea, thanks for sharing.
Amy, warmups/bellringer are good ideas for blog use. If you put more on the students with the responses, they might be more accountable. When peer interact and respond to one another, it sometimes has more impact than just an assignment handed out by the teacher. How often would you incorporate this into your lessons?
ReplyDeleteI think the responses will also add to their knowledge base. Students would gain insight and content from peer responses. This could help in retention and better conenctions when leading to summative assessments.
I think that is a wonderful idea about having them respond to a writing prompt. But, do you have enough computers to make this realistic? Or will it take them a long time to do this resulting in people waiting around for a computer to use. I think that knowing that their parents have access to things that they do daily will motivate them into putting more effort into an assignment. Almost like Big Brother if their parents were followers of this blog then in real time they could see what their child is learning.
ReplyDeleteWould the students have access to computers at school? Or do they have computers at home? I ask this because I teach at a school where students do not have access to computers at home. Also how many periods of 7th grade history do you teach, would you select one class to do this or all the classes?
ReplyDeleteTo All:
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting my blog! In answering your questions...I have 25 computers in my classroom so each student is guaranteed individual computer access--that is why I can see the usage of blogging working so well in my classroom! :) I would probably begin using blogs 1 time every week to see how well it worked then probably increase to 2-3 times a week. I believe it would depend on the cooperation from the students and possibly Honors vs. Regular classes.