It has been a while since I have last typed on here, but we have had Spring Break, so I didn't use the blog in my classroom as much. Since it had a been awhile, I was worried that the students might have gotten over the "fun" of it all. Luckily, I was wrong. When I returned to school on Wednesday (I took two extra days..) the first thing they asked was, "Can we blog some of our answers?" That really made my day.
Now that we have been blogging awhile, I am thinking a new lesson is in order: How to write properly on a blog. I think that since they see it as being on the "web" they don't have to worry about punctuation, spelling, etc. Well, what I plan on doing is printing off all the posts, cutting them up, and having them edit them next week. I hate that when some people read the blog, they might worry about their punctuation and grammar. I wanted to take things slowly and I feel this is a great next step.
In a few weeks, we will begin studying poetry and figurative language. Right now, we have just used the blogs to answer questions about the book we are reading. I am sure in a few weeks, they will be using it to publish their poems and such!
Hot Topic/Warning: Not sure if any of you read FOL, but this thread is getting pretty heated. It is just a reminder to me to make sure that IF we are on our computer when our students are in our classroom, we should be doing classroom things. If you haven't read it, you might want to check it out. There have been many times when I have read something on FOL and then something from administration has came out later on the topic.
Teacher's Personal Blog
http://www.frisco-online.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=215538&enterthread=y
Have a good evening.
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Wow, I sure do hope everyone in this book study visits the above link you posted. I never really gave much thought to the time stamp. I for one would not give out my personal blog link to parents.
ReplyDeleteI agree, personal blogs are exactly that, personal. Interesting to see community thoughts though. I imagine quite a few people are being hypocritical. I am sure anyone that works anywhere with computer access gets on a computer sometime and looks up something personal from time to time.
ReplyDeleteI do remember hearing about a specific teacher who would only post/approve comments written by her students if they were grammatically/punctuated correctly. I became a privileged to them to have it posted!
ReplyDeleteWell, I just wanted to comment that on Friday afternoon, we recieved an email reminding us NOT to write on a personal blog or forum during school hours. Just wanted to share.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up on FOL. As for the punctuation, I'm a stickler for correct punctuation and spelling. The texting jargon has thrown me for a loop!
ReplyDeleteThe FOL discussion was interesting. Although I agree teachers shouldn't spent all their time on the computer in class, some people seem to have a lot of free time on their hands to go checking up on people. I do like your idea of cutting out the postings and having them edit them for punctuation. When I try to look up info online (like how long should my baby be sleeping!), it is SO annoying when people post their opinions and there is no punctuation. It is like one long sentence and it is so hard to read through it!
ReplyDeleteIt does amaze me how much free time people seem to have. I am normally a stickler for correct punctuation as well. With the blog being so new, I wanted to give them some time to get used to it. I think they have had enough time though. I will let everyone know how things go after I do the lesson.
ReplyDeleteWell, I missed out on the FOL post. It has been removed. I can see from the comments above that someone was posting during school time, I think. Not a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of cutting out the blog comments and having the kids correct the punctuation. Are you then going to have them go back to the blog and repost their comments? Or, are you just making them aware so that the next time they comment the use complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, etc?
The idea was just to make them aware. However, now that they are aware, they are still not fixing the problem. My next plan is to not approve their comments until they are correct. This is going to start this week for the last three weeks of the chapter.
ReplyDeleteYes, the basis of the thread was that a teacher was posting online and when the parent talked to her about it, she went to private. (She had given her blog out to that specific parent).