Sometimes I find that writing gets the short end of the stick. I engage students in Writer's Workshop, and that has a variety of choice writing throughout, but I wanted more. As much I love teaching writing and crafting the elements that can make students into proud writers, there are always students that look at writing as a chore. They are the ones that will groan, "when will I ever need to do this in real life?" A question that plagues my classroom every year. In a way, I don't blame them for wanting to know the real-world applications for the things I teach! I try to link the majority of things I teach them to real world situations. Enter: blogging... A real audience, real comments, and a real application in daily life. Blogging is a way for students to talk about the things they are passionate about, and from my own experience, everyone cares about something. Our students in 7A and 7B are jumping into blogs this week, and my hope for these blogs are that they will allow students to explore the joys of writing for pleasure. Blogging has become a source of potential income for many people today. There are blogs on gaming, lifestyle, and journeys through difficult situations. Blogging connects people with the world! Throughout our discussions on blogging, a lot of students talked about vlogging and how many of their favourite YouTubers run a "vlog." YouTuber stars are this generation's celebrities, so I was happy to see them linking some parts of our classroom learning to people they so admire. To start our blogging, I took a page from TeachHUB to start to wrap my own brain around blogging with students. I'd tried it before, but I didn't feel that it became an integral part of my program. We started with a quick brainstorm led by me, to discuss what we feel blogging is, why people might blog, and what we should set as expectations for ourselves before we blog. Then we began by creating paper blogs, which I will post below once we go over them a little more! The purpose of a paper blog is to encourage students to plan ahead, and to learn the differences and similarities between blogging and writing. We will use this paper blog later on this week to discuss the etiquette of commenting and building on the ideas of others! If you would like to see the Google Slides presentation that I put together to prepare us for blogging, please click here, and know that I used many resources from our WRDSB Digital Learning Support Teacher, and some resources from colleagues for guidance as I prepared for our new writing journey. I'm excited to update you as we grow as writers this year.
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AuthorHi! I'm Mrs. MP and I teach grade seven English! I'm so excited for you to learn along with me Archives
January 2022
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