Catherine's Blog for ECI 511

I have long been a proponent for journals being an avenue for my students to explore their feelings about different things that are happening in their life.  I tried to make sure that students understood their journals were for my viewing only.  The thought was that I wanted them to learn to express their emotions freely so that they could then have plenty of content when they were writing.  I didn't feel as though my middle schoolers would be honest if they thought their emotions would be put on display for every student.  Middle School can be an even crueler experience than high school. This train of thought changed when I first discovered the power of blogging.

According to Richardson,  blogging is becoming the new way for teachers and students to interact with each other about topics.  Blogs serve several purposes.  First, they are a way to tie a traditional instructional strategy, journals, to the technology revolution of today.  One criticism that is often leveled at schools is that we are not doing enough to prepare our students for the work force.  Another is that we are out of touch with what children of today are capable of in the realm of technology.  Second, they allow teachers to foster higher level thinking skills.  I speak from experience when I say that blogging requires more than just sending a cute email to someone.  The third purpose that a blog can serve is that it can foster online learning communities.  Classrooms no longer need to be isolated islands of learning.   Students who may not have a kindred spirit in my class could quite possible find one in another, even at another school.  Students would also have a larger audience to read and respond to their thoughts than just their fellow classmates.

One source that I found especially helpful was classblogmeister.com.  This is a site just for teachers who want to utilize blogs in their classrooms.  After perusing several of the classroom blog sites, I came up with a plan for how I wanted to use this site in my classroom.  Because I want my students to actively engage in their world, I have decided to implement a current event blog.  Every week I will post hyper links to news articles that are of particular interest to my students.   Students will be given a choice of two to four news articles.  They are to read the article then write a response to the article on their blog.  They will also be required to post comments to other blogs written about the same article.  Depending on the response, some students might need to be assigned articles as you always have those who claim they weren't interested in either one.

As I have mentioned before, research plays a big role in my eighth grade curriculum.  I also like for students to make real world connections with the literature they are reading.   One example is the novel The Weirdo by Theodore Taylor.  This is a book set in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina.  One of the main conflicts in the book is that between environmentalists and black bear hunters.  Just recently, there was an article in the News and Observer about a protest that is scheduled to take place in the next month about the annual bear hunt that takes place in the Dismal Swamp.  I would have students read this article and respond to it.  This gives a real world connection to our novel.  For every realistic fiction piece we read, there is something to mirror the conflict that plays out in the daily newspapers.

Blogging is the best way to bridge the gap between what students want to do and what teachers need for them to do.  The possibilities are endless when you are a language arts teacher who believes that the more students write, the better they will become.