Like any tool, I think using blogs has to be built upon. My main goal in the beginning is to have students pay close attention to grammar! Sometimes I feel like a broken record... "Capitalize the beginning of a sentence! If you capitalize your name, why wouldn't you capitalize your friend's name? You just wrote a paragraph and have no punctuation!" I believe it would be beneficial for students to see what and how their fellow classmates write. Most of the time they know that I am the only one who is going to see their writing. If they know their friends will see their responses, maybe they will spend more time with capitalization and punctuation. And maybe, just maybe, some of them will try and write more than a couple of sentences!
After tackling grammar, I will start out having students respond to stories I read aloud or stories we read together. Students can discuss their favorite characters, parts in the story, or even change the ending to a story. Since I teach reading, language, math, science, and social studies, students could also create a hypothesis on experiments or become a character in history. Eventually, I hope that we can work our way up to more critical thinking questions but I have to begin somewhere.
I am also an English teacher! I love your ideas! I teach high school, so I don't think my students care as much what the rest of the class thinks about their grammar (it seems to be a trend that our students write/speak in "text speak" as I call it!), but maybe it would work! Could you use a blog to start an essay (or story in your case) and have students add to it to create a class essay? Having students post their work and other students peer review is a good idea too. Thanks for getting the wheels in my brain turning on how I can use a blog in the English classroom!
ReplyDeleteWhitney-Thank you so much for the idea of having students contribute to a story. I love it!
ReplyDeleteChristina, excellent idea to get your students to post to your blog. As soon as they know everyone can see what they are writing they will write better, using proper punctuation and grammar. What types of books do you read with your students? I remember when my two older boys were in elementary school they would invite the parents in as "guest readers", I use to love going over to read with them. My favorite book was "One Grain of Rice". It was a morality story that taught the students math at the same time. It was good technique to get the parents involved in class activities, and exciting for the students because they never knew who was coming in or what book was going to be read that day.
ReplyDeleteDo you have fourth graders that write in "text" lingo? I do not teach English, but I have seen some work of some of the current high school students in my building. These students write the word love, luv or you, u or okay, k. Do you see this at the 4th grade level? Is technology making us lazy? I think so that is why I think your concept of starting small with grammar is an EXCELLENT idea!
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