A Classroom Learning To Blog

Over the past two weeks, I worked with one of our third grade classrooms to set up a classroom blog. This was an exciting project and one that I hope will gain a lot of traction here in our elementary school. It has been a worthwhile venture, but there were definitely some bumps in the road to be worked out. I would like to share our process for getting started for anybody out there thinking about taking this on themselves.  The initial time investment was absolutely worth it.

Photo Credit:Langwitches

Mrs. Lucas was looking for authentic reading and writing experiences for her students as well as a way to share what they are learning in their classroom.

up and coming bloggers from room 202

Mrs. Lucas and I initially met to discuss her goals for this project and her desire to have the blog authored primarily by her students.We set up a free blogspot through Google's Blogger because we have a district GAFE  account. Another place to host a classroom friendly blog space might be Seesaw.  This is a free resource aimed at younger children that I have had my eye on  lately. They have recently added a blog feature.

With the students, we began by discussing what a blog is, what it can be used for and then we explored some blogs created by others. The kids especially liked looking at the blog authored by our own Mrs.Rosak.  Mrs.Rosak is an avid reader. She created her blog to share her love of reading with others. See her blog here.  We also explored classroom blogs that featured young student writers. Mrs.Yollis from California has been blogging with elementary students for years.  Her blog had great examples for adding multimedia to a post. This was an excellent post for us to learn from. Mrs. Yollis provides a wealth of blogging resources for teachers linked to her blog.

Next, we had some practical blog management discussions:

• how to add photos and images to our blog- applicable photos and images make a blog post more interesting and engaging
• adding links with additional, related information
• the importance of using our own photos and images whenever possible and giving proper credit for images that are not ours
• ending our post with specific questions to try to engage the reader to participate in a discussion with us
• how to write quality comments for a blog post

Creating our first two blog posts as a group was a lot of fun.  This time allowed us to not only continue learning the basics of blog creation, but we also were able to add in a few grammar mini-lessons as well. Thank you Mrs.Rosak for your input in that area!  The kids were so excited when we posted live and got several comments back.  Thank you to our supportive South Side staff who took the time to write something.  It meant so much to these budding authors!

The students in room 202 are now working hard to write their own posts.  They will have something new to share soon.  Please take a look at their blog and share a comment to help keep them  motivated and writing.  

As I worked on this project, I was able to collect some helpful lesson plans, checklists and rubrics from others who have gone before us. No need to reinvent the wheel. Let's share.  Please contact me if I can help.

Have you created a blog?  Would you like to?  Share some of your thoughts and questions in the comments below.  Thanks for reading!