Our Classroom Blog

I created a classroom blog at the beginning of the year because I wasn't able to post digital photo albums or videos on my classroom website.  I also wanted a place where students could comment on what we were learning together and our celebrations.

At first, I didn't require students to write anything.  In fact, I had hoped to encourage them to participate by offering them extra credit for sharing thoughts that asked questions, made thoughtful comments or going into the topic even deeper.  When I evaluated this recently and saw that only a handful of students were participating, I began to require it for homework once a week. 

There are many great reasons to use this:  I can have easy access to the thoughts of my students on topics we're currently studying.  I can assess if they are actually answering the question and giving details to support their answers.  Spelling, grammar, and punctuation can also be assessed, in addition to me being able to hold them accountable for doing their homework. 

I've made 3 observations so far.  Students don't think about spelling, grammar and punctuation when writing on the blog for some reason.  We will have a discussion about this tomorrow as we look at our most recent blog entry.  Also, not all students are actually reading and answering the questions, which is something I also see on reading tests.  Finally, some students continuously are not doing their homework so I can contact parents right away about this, and you even have access to proof that it was done late because the time and date is stamped on each entry. 

Feel free to check out our classroom blog.  It has been a lot of fun, and tomorrow I'll be posting a Photo Story we made about our ABC book on Minnesota.

Miss Shaw's Blog