Welcome to all of my Walden U colleagues and to anyone who happens by! Thanks for joining me on this journey. I've started a couple of blogs over the past couple of years, but have abandoned them. This one, I hope to be different. I have visions of ongoing collaboration across borders, content areas, and grade levels. I am excited to get started and look forward to the thrill-ride that these technology classes promise to be. Most of all, I look forward to improving my classroom instruction and using technology more effectively in my class!
Let's begin!
Debb,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I love your title! I like what you said about how you teach your students to be reflective thinkers and learners. My students need a lot of help in this area. They don’t care to be too reflective about their work in general, but they sure need to be.
At least you have tried blogging with your students; I have not attempted blogging with my students. The first time I ever heard about blogging was in the first class we had back in November. I love your idea about the blogging book club! I actually blogged to you on Friday, but it didn’t take (I am technologically impaired!) I said that the librarian in my school started a book club last year, and many of the ninth grade students signed up (my building has ninth grade only). It has been successful, but the one problem she had was that students couldn’t always make it on the day the club met. By having your club create a blog, you would eliminate that problem. People would share when they could; I think it would be very successful. One idea you could try would be to set up a blogging demonstration about the book club. This might help to gain student interest in the club. I was surprised to discover that many of my students don’t know what blogging is. They all text, and go on Facebook, but they didn’t know about blogging.
Debb,
ReplyDeleteSometimes I allow my students to choose their own book, but I have to approve it, because they sometimes tend to choose books that are not grade-level appropriate. Sometimes I assign everyone the same novel. For example, we are going to be starting Of Mice and Men soon, so if I had honors(I don't this year) I would assign The Grapes of Wrath as an outside reading novel. Since I have never done blogging in my classroom, I thought maybe the kids would get one month to read the novel, and then on say, 3 days a week, they could blog about the book. Maybe discuss something interesting they learned, or talk about something they were confused about. I would give them theme-based questions, and I would make sure to keep to the standards. For example, I would focus on vocabulary and concept development, comprehension skills and response to text. They could analyze and evaluate figurative language in the novel, etc. I would have to get my feet wet in this blogging pool first, as you said. (I love that by the way!)