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?!
Wow, your students are definitely hooked! The learning is so authentic here and I think it is so cute how your students could identify different personalities through blog posts!
ReplyDeleteI love how your students were so concerned about helping the other 3rd grade class! I also really liked how you aloud them to develop the idea on their own (means more to them). Awesome job! I can't wait to hear how your students' writing improves. The enthusiasm that your class is showing towards their blogs is amazing, it can only go up from here!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE THIS! Things have been really crazy here with SBAC, but I will share your post with my students later today to hopefully inspire them to check out your classes blog again. It worked out so well that we were doing persuasive at the same time. I actually was able to use some of your students blog posts for my mini lessons! If only we had more hours in the day (and more computers too :) )
ReplyDeleteThis is so great! What a great way for your students to have meaningful writing experiences. Also, it is so great that they are so excited about this collaboration. The enthusiasm that they are exhibiting proves that this meaningful learning experience will go much farther than a traditional writing assignment.
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