It seems like everyone is blogging these days! What started out as a simple online diary has turned into a worldwide phenomenon. Suddenly everyone is a writer!
Fortunately, blogging provides a wonderful forum for writing in the classroom. Not only can we read and analyze blogs written by professional authors, but we can become authors of our own blogs. What this means for students is they finally have an immediate audience and a purpose for their writing.
Writing is probably the hardest skill to teach in the classroom. Many students are reluctant writers who have difficulty seeing a purpose for their writing. Having an interested and caring audience helps to motivate and excite the writer within us all!
This year, we will be using kidblog.org, a blogging website designed specifically for classrooms. It is a closed blog, so only the members of our classroom can access our class blogs. Your child will be blogging throughout the year using a variety of writing genres including narrative, expository, and argumentative. You as a parent will be able to watch your child grow as a writer in both skill and confidence.
To prepare for our first blog entries, we looked at three blogs written by well-known children's authors. We found that all three blogs had commonalities. Based on our findings, we established the following guidelines for our blogs:
~Write what you know
~Write what you care about
~Make a point
We will write our first blogs here at school this week. Editing continues to be a challenge for many fourth grade students, so students will work in pairs to help edit one another's work. Your child will be sharing their blog with you (there will be an access button on the Home page of this website). Please feel free to assist your child with further editing as needed. The goal is for students to develop an awareness of their readers and recognize the need for editing.
Students will be able to provide feedback to one another by commenting. We will work on this skill as well. Comments should be thoughtful, specific, and beneficial to the writer. All comments have to be teacher approved before they are posted.
I hope you enjoy the blogging experience along with us this year.
Happy Blogging!
Fortunately, blogging provides a wonderful forum for writing in the classroom. Not only can we read and analyze blogs written by professional authors, but we can become authors of our own blogs. What this means for students is they finally have an immediate audience and a purpose for their writing.
Writing is probably the hardest skill to teach in the classroom. Many students are reluctant writers who have difficulty seeing a purpose for their writing. Having an interested and caring audience helps to motivate and excite the writer within us all!
This year, we will be using kidblog.org, a blogging website designed specifically for classrooms. It is a closed blog, so only the members of our classroom can access our class blogs. Your child will be blogging throughout the year using a variety of writing genres including narrative, expository, and argumentative. You as a parent will be able to watch your child grow as a writer in both skill and confidence.
To prepare for our first blog entries, we looked at three blogs written by well-known children's authors. We found that all three blogs had commonalities. Based on our findings, we established the following guidelines for our blogs:
~Write what you know
~Write what you care about
~Make a point
We will write our first blogs here at school this week. Editing continues to be a challenge for many fourth grade students, so students will work in pairs to help edit one another's work. Your child will be sharing their blog with you (there will be an access button on the Home page of this website). Please feel free to assist your child with further editing as needed. The goal is for students to develop an awareness of their readers and recognize the need for editing.
Students will be able to provide feedback to one another by commenting. We will work on this skill as well. Comments should be thoughtful, specific, and beneficial to the writer. All comments have to be teacher approved before they are posted.
I hope you enjoy the blogging experience along with us this year.
Happy Blogging!