Students! Post your thoughts about The Underground Railroad Experience from National Geographic here!

How would you feel belonging to a farmer?  Nothing, including your body is yours.

What thoughts came to mind as you heard the Steal Away freedom song?

What feelings do you have as you knock on a white person's door for help?

Who are some of the people you met along the way that helped you on your journey?

What are some of the cities you had to pass through?

Estimate how long the journey took you. 

Why do you think slaves took all of the risks involved to make it to "Freedom at last?" 

Another facet of blogging...

Book Reviews or Commercials!  What a cool way to tell others about books that you are reading...Post your thoughts in a classroom blog entry!  Students who are posting about books are getting a few benefits in one task.  They are working on writing skills- they are using written words to talk about books.  It is not as easy to put your thoughts into words that are easily interpreted by students.  It is easier to verbalize your thoughts to others instead of putting them into words for others to read.  This is an important skill for our writers to conceptualize.  Also, students need to be able to read others reviews and interpret meaning.  A reciprocal skill that complements the writing done by students.  Also, it gives students a place to talk about their reading and to get them excited about what they are reading.  Readers are leaders!  Letting students lead the way to talk about their reading puts them in charge of the process.  You just get to be an active observer and help them along the journey! Here is a great blog that shows something you could help your students set up!

Blogging- A Tool with SO Many Uses!

HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking reminds me of myself last year.  I had created a classroom blog where I posted questions that I wanted my students to respond to that would engage them in critical thinking.  I focused questions around books that I was reading aloud to students.  I would get on the blog Friday night at like 11 pm and see many posts from my students- many that were right after school.  This was highly encouraging to see!  Friday night was spent on academic and scholarly tasks!  The blog entries would continue to roll in over the weekend!  As time went on I too faced the same problem as Stephanie- student comments were so enthusiastic at first.  Then they waned quickly.  Students wanted more from their blog.  Then wanted to be able to publish their writing on the blog.  Then wanted to add poems they had written and narratives.  Here is a comment by Jarod from my class last year, "I want to celebrate my writing by having others read it.  I would rather read it online than sit in class and have people read their piece to me.  That is old school Mrs. Engle."  I printed that comment and placed it by my computer where it still hangs.  It reminds me to stay away from my "old school" ways! 

By having students post their writing work on the blog I can see so many good things happening...Constant revisions could be occurring as students receive comments from their peers to perfect the piece.  There would be so much more exposure to other pieces.  Students could read as many as they wanted and not have to worry about getting with a partner.  There would be so many different perspectives offered to help craft the piece.  The flip side of that is there may be problems with not so nice comments.  Etiquette would have to be taught.  Procedures would need to be put into place.  The teacher would no longer be the end all grader.  Students could help evaluate pieces!  How cool would that be?  Teachers would take a less active role and merely be a facilitator in the process.  Parents would have access to student work.  They would be able to see the evolution of their student as a writer and could take an active role in their child's education.  This would make it easier for parents to take part in writing education.  If student work was published on the web all year long you could easily evaluate growth accumulated by each student throughout the year.  This would serve as an evolving portfolio for each student.  What a way to study other writer's crafts as well!       

Writing Using Technology

It is interesting to me to think of writers having the opportunity to draft written pieces using technology.  I can remember being in first grade in 1988 and getting to sit at a computer to publish a poem that I had planned, drafted, revised, edited, and published on paper.  I then was told I could publish my poem using the computer.  I sat down at a station that looked like this... This was the first time I had ever sat down at a computer.  I had no idea what to do.  The letters looked similar to mine that I had handwritten but not exactly.  I was not sure what to do.  I typed all through the computer time and recess.  I finally finished and the teacher hit print.  I looked at my paper and started to cry.  There was no space between my words!  It was supposed to do that for me! The teacher has closed my screen and not saved.  I was so embarrassed to show my mom my piece at parent teacher conferences.  I vowed then and there to learn how to use that machine that made my writing look cool, but could not figure out what I needed it to do.  The article, Email as Genre: A Beginning Writer Learns the Conventions, talked about a little girl that assumed that her grandma would know what she was talked about when she said, "I loved it."  I was that little girl!  I assumed that the computer would space for me and she assumed that Grandma would remember the specifics of her previous email to make sense of the reply.  

Letting students learn to draft thoughtful replies via email could definitely enhance a student's writing ability to respond with thoughts embedded throughout.  By typing your feelings you have to be explicit with what you mean to say.   Planning mentally a reply to an email requires thought on the student's part.  The actual drafting of the email requires a writer to write with detail and explicit wording to get points across.  In response to a question students need to be sure to address the question in its entirety so that the reply is complete.  These are all valuable skills that will help students be able to craft responses that address all points necessary in other types of writing as well.  Students can then be taught to reread and make proper revisions.  Grammar could be enhanced with spell check options in email and other grammar checks built in.  This would help catch sentence fragments and provide teaching opportunities for that aspect of grammatical  instruction. 

Another facet of students using email as a form of perfecting part of their writing craft is that once something has been typed it is permanent. Once words are typed, even before they are sent, they are available for retrieval.  This is an important teaching point for students.  They need to be careful what is typed.  A rule that I live by...If I would not want to see my words on the front page of the newspaper, then I should not type them.  An email can be powerful, but dangerous if misinterpreted.  Richard Capone has some good points when teaching how to draft an email in his article, Is Email A New Genre of Writing?