Introducing my new students to our class blog has been a great eye opener. In the past, I have had endless numbers of conversations with colleagues about engaging students and making the learning purposeful and have not come up with a great solution or strategy that we have not already attempted. This year, my students have proven that blogging is giving them a purpose for their writing. I have been urgently stopped by several students in the past week as I am about to hit the ‘publish’ button on our class blog posts. We had created the posts as a shared reading. Students stopped me because there wasn’t a capital in the title, or we forgot a period, or there was a random capital in the middle of the sentence, or I was trying to rush the process and just get it done quickly and hadn’t revised or proof read my writing before hitting the ‘publish’ button. I have spent years drilling these ‘rules’ to kids and have not had this kind of response. They care that it’s right because they have a REAL audience. When REAL people (not their teachers) are reading their work-it seems to matter to them a whole lot more. Scientists that we have web conferenced with have commented on our blog and that is REAL for kids.
Leigh Cassell Consulting 