You’ve done a lot with images and visual media on your site. I like that. I’ll point my students your way and see what happens. A few of them have visited other classroom blogs, but they don’t get much time with the computers at school, and it seems like almost none of them work on the website from home.

I do see the value in writing with the kids, but I can’t keep up. Your comment prompts me, though, to think a bit more on why that might be a good idea. I may do more of that before the school year is over.

Blathering is perfectly acceptable, BTW. Thanks.

I read some where that teachers who blog with students should not “teach” but should join the conversation. I’m trying. I edit minor mistakes because I think people judge you by how you write, our blog is probably more “formal” than most. Our Drupel blog has a spell check and most kids use it. I do have two students who are horrific spellers and I don’t quite know what to do with them–their spelling is so distracting, they lose the message.

I did my first webpages with kids about ten years ago and I never let kids do “personal” pages…favorite color, favorite band, etc. Figured they could do that on their own time–I wanted content. I re-enforce the same philosophy with the class blog.

The purpose of the class blog is to get kids to think and start a conversation others might be interested in and so far they are doing a wonderful job. (Original purposes also included safety and copyright awareness) My main frustration so far is motivation. If I give them time, they will blog while in class but I wanted this to be a “bigger” event and only a few bloggers write daily. My boys, even the ones who are exceptional writers, don’t blog often enough.

Interesting tidbits–I have a student with Aspergers, OCD and anxiety issues. He is an excellent writer but always writes on a science topic and never comments on other students writing. So typical in a “social” enviroment–he kinda missed the point!

One of my daily bloggers convinced both of her parents to blog and they correspond as one thinker to another–it’s cool.

If you have any student bloggers who want to join in, I’m sure my students would be thrilled. Finished blathering–N

PS Signing up to blog was optional. I teacher gifted kids, grades K-6.

Some still say that they can’t compose on the keyboard, though. Understand that they use portable keyboards at their desks that only show three lines of text at at time, and depend on the arrow keys for cursor placement. I couldn’t compose on one of those, either. They download to text files on the classroom computers to format and revise their work before they dump it into the web site.

From there I usually correct their spelling and add periods, which few seem to think about. Sometimes I get grouchy and put the periods in, and tell them to fix up the capitalizations. Forget the spell checker. When they use that, they choose words that are often completely wrong. I can usually figure out what they mean when they spell intuitively.

Often I’ll have them print their work and we do the spelling and revising with a pencil on the hard copy. Other times I sit with them and we talk about it, if there are content problems. There are a lot of process-related rough spots.

Subject matter is negotiated. Sometimes I choose. Sometimes they choose. I’ve worked on formal writing with them, and tried to help them with topic sentences, supporting details, outlines, etc.

As for the question of transference to the testing environment… I think that the demands put on them in the formal tests are completely unnatural, and I don’t know if there is any way to prepare them to respond thoughtfully to a series of prompts that require them to write multiple stories and essays in a single sitting.

I’ve seen their handwritten composition improve as the year goes along. They don’t balk at any writing task now. That may be the daily discipline kicking in. Maybe.