I teach 7th grade English, and about 90% of my students have regular access to the internet. One practice or skill that I strive to teach them to be reflective thinkers and learners: reflect on their independent reading, reflect on the writing, reflect on the concepts we are learning in not just my class, but in all of their classes. In the past I have attempted to blog with my students, but it never really took off like I wanted it to.
This year we have been working hard on book selection, how to choose the right book, how to tell if a book is too hard or too easy for them, or if it just is not grabbing and hooking them. During our study of informational text, we studied and learned to write book reviews. What made the students excited about the reviews was that we posted the excellent reviews on www.amazon.com. What excited the students was that they actually could help other people make a book selection based on their review. They took this responsibility seriously.
I think for our first blogging experience, I want to begin a blogging book club. There are several books that are "hot" in my classes this year: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins; The Boy Who Dared, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti are just a couple. I think my students would benefit from reflecting on their reading, and other students would like to read the comments and discussions. To go along with this, I think just an independent reading idea list would give those students not interested in reading the books being discussed in the book club the chance to participate in this online extension of the class room. The idea list would be more like an online book talk, complete with links to the author's homepage and links that would aid in comprehension. The students have started a list in the classroom, and I think the next logical and necessary step would be to take it online.
My past experience with using blogs for my classes is that they can be--to use a cliche--an inch deep and a mile wide. Maybe for the beginning, keeping the blog this focus can help improve the depth of the blog.
The idea of blogging for a book club is an excellent idea to encourage students to read. In this way they can discuss the book with their classmates before they get to the classroom. You can even make the blog part of their grade. They can offer their opinion about a specific aspect about the book and ask students to provide evidence in the book by citing specific quotes and page numbers. This can teach students how to cite when offering their thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI think using blogging as an on-line book club sounds like a great idea. The students could really get involved in discussions and share ideas about the books--especially with the popular books that a lot of the students are reading.
ReplyDeleteThe one problem that comes to mind is that giving the students such an easy way to get a lot of information about the books would give them the ability to write a book report without ever really reading the book (which is obviously a problem even without technology). One way around this would be to have the students post quotes from the book with citations, with the instruction that the quotes must be different from their classmates. This wouldn't necessarily solve the problem, but it might help.
Overall, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives with using blogs as a book club. I also like the idea of posting student book reviews on Amazon.com, and will probably use that myself.
Sincerely,
Tim Mount
Along with our fellow colleagues, I also think the idea of book club blogging is a great one. I can see the concern, but having set guidelines for the blog could eliminate this issue. You might even want to create a simple rubric for appropriate blog posts and comments, similar to what we use at Walden. This would also eliminate the question of grading. I do not think that posting information without reading the book will be a problem because this will be a forum for opinions and insights, rather than a place to post a summary. From the view of an English teacher, I can tell what students actually read the text and which simply read the summary off of sites such Sparknotes. I actually usually read those sites, just to see if students are reading the site instead of the text. I actually like the idea so much for a blogging book club, I think I would like to search to see if there are any out there for me! For anyone interested I found a site http://books.livingsocial.com/ and I use it to keep my own personal visual bookshelf and read other reader's insights. It really is a great site, if you like reading you should try it, and it would be great for students who are avid readers as well. For students involved in social networking sites, it can be accessed through Facebook as well.
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ReplyDeleteI like the idea of the blog book club. I think the students would enjoy the idea of blogging instead of only reading the texts and talking about it. There is scope for a lot of follow-up activities and I think the social networking aspect would be a great motivator to doing this activity. Tell me how it goes!
ReplyDeletePauline Branker
Debb/Yoda, I love your idea and I am not an English teacher. I am not sure how to pirate the idea yet (I teach high school Spanish) but I want to! In answer to getting "deeper" (although I am sure you have many of your own ideas) you could do extention activities like having them compare and contrast with other works/authors, have them write an alternate ending or have them come up with a set of picture sequences and let other students decide which part of the story it represents. (The last one is less extention activity than remediation maybe...)
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy this idea and think it would be a great idea to implement in the classroom. I like how the students have an incentive to work towards having an excellent review posted on amazon.com. I also think that having a rubric would help set clear guidlines for students and yourself when assigning a grade to the blogs. If there is a library in your school with internet, there is no reason a student could not participate in the review. I think that your idea is well thought out and you will never know what works and what doesn't until the students are involved. That will give you a better idea on things you can do to improve the blog for student enrichment.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great comments and questions. The best answer I can give you is yes, but I am not sure how to go about adding original pieces. I would imagine with a little more experience we could figure that out.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea having your students post on amazon in order to help others chose good books. I run into that problem quite often. It does not seem like much, but finding the right book for a kid can be the difference between them being hooked on reading and them not caring.
Thanks,
Joe