I bet if I tell my grandpa he will tell all his friends

After the initial introduction to blogging I was immediately in awe of the enthusiasm my students had once they found out their writing was going to be published. Every morning they came in asking, "Can we check the blog? Did you approve my comments?" It was incredible to listen to the conversations occurring during morning work and during writing class. They were giving each other ideas for their writing and talking about ways to improve each other's writing. Some even found similarities in their writing.

This past week I introduced Mrs. Banville's 3rd grade class writing blog to my students. We checked out some of their blogs! I had to hold back laughter at some of my kids verbal comments as they read through the blogs of students they didn't even know. "Wow, he can write pretty good for a 3rd grader," "He is definitely the class clown," "I bet if we were in the same class we would be friends." Already, through one blog post, my students were getting a sense of who these mystery 3rd graders were through their writing! It didn't take long for my students to ask, "Can we make comments on their blogs and ask them to make comments on ours (my plan all along)?!" I acted confused and posed the question, "Why should we comment on their blogs? We don't even know them." I learned real fast why we should comment. My students were outraged that I would even ask such a question. "Miss Montambault, it doesn't matter if we know them or not! We could help them with their writing and they could help us! That's all the matters!" So we did.

We spent the afternoon reading Mrs. Banville's student's blogs and adding comments. The next day at lunchtime as I was passing my class's lunch table walking to the teacher's lounge I overheard this conversation (It was too good not to write down before I started my lunch):
"Do you think Eric (a student in Mrs. Banville's class) finished his list of 101 ways to bug your teacher?"
"I commented on it but it will probably take him 100 years to finish a list that long."
"Yah but anyone can comment and there are like a billion people in the world."
"We should tell all the people we know to comment and then he will fill his list fast."
"I bet if I tell my grandpa he will tell all his friends."

This was lunch conversation! How can you beat that?!

Our experience blogging

After tweeting with so many awesome educators during our online class on February 18th I felt encouraged and empowered to start blogging with my students. I had idea after idea running through my head. I barely slept that night. I went into school extra early Wednesday morning to sign up for the laptop cart (every week until SBAC testing). I pulled up some old and new material on what it means to be a digital citizen and the importance of being safe online and I was ready to go. My kids were SO excited when I told them we were going to be learning about being responsible on the internet so that we could eventually start blogging. They had so many "what if" questions and so many stories to share about their experiences on the internet. It sparked some great conversations. I started off by using a resource suggested by Marialice about making Paper Blogs first with students to prepare them for online blogging. We talked about what a blog is, what features a blog has, what tags are and how they are useful, what we will be blogging about, and how to give helpful comments. The paper blogs came out awesome! Once the blogs were done, students took time to comments on each other's with sticky notes. I was shocked at the responses from even my most stubborn writer's. They were hooked! They were begging me to get the laptop cart so they could get their blogs up and running.

The next morning we got on the laptops and I showed my students how to log on. We created our posts together and then practiced giving each other comments. It was a bit overwhelming because I had to approve all their posts and comments in that moment so they could respond to each other but we managed. Later that evening I pulled out my computer to show my mom our classroom blog and I had 27 comments awaiting approval all submitted after school hours! I had several students blogging from home! I wanted this excitement to stick! As I was reading, approving, and replying I started to realize that not only were my students being forced to work on their writing skills, but I was spending hours giving constructive feedback. I immediately recognized the difference between the authentic comments I was replying with and the check marks and smiley faces I was so used to giving on paper.

As I sat back and watched as my brilliant fourth graders helped each other through the blogging experience I found myself in the midst of a wonderful teaching opportunity. One of my girls posted in her blog that her grandmother made homemade pasta with her secret recipe, while another girl commented saying that her aunt had a secret recipe as well. A third student commented on the post asking for the secret recipes. I then posed the question, "Why should you never post secret recipes online?" The first response back was, "We are sorry Miss Montambault. It won't happen again." I brought this up the next morning in class and we talked about how everything on the internet stays there forever. The girls soon caught on and agreed that secret recipes are best kept off the internet.

So far it has been a wonderful experience. I am learning as I go which is a little scary. I like to have a plan, and if I am being honest I really don't have one. Should I be encouraging blogging from home or should I keep it strictly to something we do together in school? What should my students be blogging about? We talked about the importance of rereading and proofreading before submitting posts and comments but some of my students don't know when to use capitalization and don't see anything wrong with their run-on sentences and grammar mistakes. How do I address this?