Friday, July 8, 2011
Integrating Blogs in the Classroom
My idea for how to integrate a blog into my 5th grade classroom would be to let all my students have access to posting comments and sharing their learning with not only their parents, but also make it sort of an online pen pal with another 5th grade class in another state. This way the students can see how their communities, schools and states are similar and different. With a mail pen pal it takes quite a bit of time to receive a letter and to get a letter in return, this way when the students go to their computer lab or access it online they can see instant posts and comments. I could use this blog to give my students a grade on their writing and communication skills. We could also use it to study our social studies and do research about our area to share with our pen pals or look up information on their state so we would know more about them.
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This is a great way to help fifth graders learn appropriate communication. There are many interactive writing prompts that you could use on this blog. It would be a great way for students within the class as well to learn more about each other.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea to create blogs with studetns from other states. I have heard of teachers doing this with e-mail but using blogs allow for more students to read the comments of each other and not just one other student. Choosing a school across country would be a great learning experience not only in the area of history but also the study of the weather between the two places. Just think what you could discuss if you could connect to an English school in another country!
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea of using blogs as an on-line pen pal project. When I taught second grade (several years ago) we had pen pals that we hand wrote letters too. Of course, with snail mail it took awhile to get a response back from the letters. I had considered using e-mail but our school e-mail is not set-up to allow students to use it. There are also other e-mail sites for schools but I have never ventured to see what they entail. I will have to think about the idea of creating blogs for that purpose! Great idea! Have you thought about whether you will require them to show you their post before they publish it? How will you handle it? Will you require a certain amount of posts - say per week? One thought would be to have them save the post (you can do that in Blogger - I do not know about other sites) and then once you read and okay the post then you can publish it. As I think about using a blog, even just one post per week, is a lot more than my students ever received with snail mail! How exciting for students to hear from their new friend frequently while practicing their communication and writing skills!
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea of using blogs as an on-line pen pal project. When I taught second grade (several years ago) we had pen pals that we hand wrote letters too. Of course, with snail mail it took awhile to get a response back from the letters. I had considered using e-mail but our school e-mail is not set-up to allow students to use it. There are also other e-mail sites for schools but I have never ventured to see what they entail. I will have to think about the idea of creating blogs for that purpose! Great idea! Have you thought about whether you will require them to show you their post before they publish it? How will you handle it? Will you require a certain amount of posts - say per week? One thought would be to have them save the post (you can do that in Blogger - I do not know about other sites) and then once you read and okay the post then you can publish it. As I think about using a blog, even just one post per week, is a lot more than my students ever received with snail mail! How exciting for students to hear from their new friend frequently while practicing their communication and writing skills!
ReplyDeleteHi. This is Byron Early from your Walden class. I don’t know if I'm using this blog right, but i hope I am. I really think that your incorporation of blogs in your classroom instruction is a great idea. Some challenges you may face in the classroom with this incorporation may be students using spell checks on the computer to correct their misspelled words. This may cripple students when they actually free write on actual paper or a standardized test. I feel some restrictions should be put on students using spell checks on the computer to help them rely on their own understanding of how words are spelled.
ReplyDeleteI love your pen pal idea! I am interested in including more writing in my 8th Grade math class this year. I find that even the students that understand how to complete the algebra problems that we are working on have trouble explaining their process. They definitely struggle with the appropriate use of math vocabulary and incorporating this into some sort of pen pal format might be a great way to engage them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the idea.
Jenna