Kid Blogs and Student Led On-Line Book Clubs

Earlier this fall I was talking about deciding on the best forum for my students' on-line book reviews. While I ended up choosing Google Sites, I am thinking that Kid Blogs may have actually been a better fit, at least as an initial introduction to on-line book reviews and reflections of learning. While younger students are still getting used to blogging I have realized that it can be quite time consuming for basic posts and I have not been able to integrate in many of the features that Kid Blogs does not have and that I saw as a reason to choose Google Sites over Kid Blogs.

However, with experience I am seeing how Kid Blogs would be an excellent introduction to blogging and probably does have everything I need, especially for 6th and 7th graders. With Google Sites, even though the announcement page works as a micro-blog, I don't like how all users are able to edit posts, rather than just being able to post a comment (one difference between wikis and blogs).

When I started to do my first multi-age on-line book club of the year, I decided to have students do it on Kid Blogs. While we did on-line book clubs last year, this was different because I decided to have 8th graders lead the book club discussions. In partners the 8th graders did a post for each discussion day and the 6th and 7th graders added comments to discuss with their group. It has been going very smoothly. As I had known from before, it was so easy to set up and the students were quickly able to transition to using Kid Blogs since they were already familiar with posting and writing comments.

For now, I would recommend Kid Blogs vs. Google Site and re-evaluate when it seems like students are ready for more than Kid Blogs has to offer. This will change year to year as students arrive at my classroom with more previous experience with technology. Earlier this year our director and a couple of teachers wanted to do some book blogging with 2nd and 3rd graders, so I helped them set up a Kid Blog, and they have loved it. Once those students are 6th graders, they will already have a foundation in blogging and may be ready for a more advanced format - or not. I guess I will just wait and see each year, considering which technology tools are available and which are the best match for the students. Always so much to experiment and explore with educational technology!

Writing Reflections

This quarter I have been having students write more reflections. Last week I loved reading through their writing reflections in Spanish that they submitted with a working draft, answering two questions:

1. How does this piece of writing demonstrate your growth as a writer?
2. What would you still improve if you were going to revise this piece of writing?

Before writing their reflections, I reminded students of the level of depth I would like to see in their reflections. While reading through them, I realized that it was as enjoyable as reading book letters; I loved seeing their insights. While reading, I underlined certain words/phrases/sentences in order to remind myself of what I want to discuss while I confer with students about their growth as writers. I also noted trends in areas where students mentioned that they still want to improve as writers. For example, this year we had already focused on improving leads. Many students commented on their growth with leads but mentioned that they were not happy with their conclusions. For my cognition study that I recently mentioned, the teaching point will be conclusions. While this was already a natural focal concept that I had been planning on, my students' candid reflections reaffirmed that this will be relevant to their current goals as writers.

Pairing up their reflections with a working draft also helped to see how students' view of their progress matched up with the actual transfer into their writing. There was a range of levels to which extent the drafts actually matched up to reflected growth. While some students seemed to be using the teaching point language as buzz words that were not actually apparent in their writing, others actually demonstrated the growth. The important part to remember is that wherever the writers are, it is okay. Those who are talking about the teaching points but not yet showing it consistently in their writing are at least showing a heightened level of consciousness with the teaching points but just need more support and reminders, while other students are working at more independent levels.

It only took about ten minutes for the students to write their reflections, and it was time well-spent. It is always interesting to have a combination of written reflections and conferring - both providing a slightly different piece to the puzzle of who students are as readers and writers.

Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements

Since a lot of my educational reading this year has been for my doctoral classes, I have not been able to read (and consequently post) about professional books for pleasure. Right now I am at various stages with about four other books, but Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme by Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm was the first book that I have read through completely lately.

I read most of Reading Don't Fix No Chevys this summer and I have heard a lot about one of the authors because he is a professor at the university where I am getting my Ed.D., so I was familiar with the authors and interested to see their latest book. When I saw them talking about transferring learning on the Amazon preview, I could not resist purchasing it right away. I could tell that their philosophy aligned with the well-known workshop, "Read like writers and write like readers." 

For my cognition class this semester, I had been thinking of doing my research project on whether or not writing to learn journals seem to have an impact on helping students facilitate what they notice as readers into their own writing vs. solely discussing what they notice. When I got the book, I realized that there were many mentions of cognition and it actually pointed me toward investigating situated cognition further. I always love it when a book aligns even more closely with a current focal area than I had anticipated. 

Aside from the cognition and transfer aspects, in general I just loved the book. Toward the end of last year I was realizing that students were getting comprehension strategies that I had focused on a lot over the last couple of years but that they were not prompting students to deeply analyze texts, so I began considering how to scaffold students' abilities to move toward analysis. This book has many ideas on how to work toward that goal. 

Most of all, one of my favorite aspects was the frequent mentions of the value of studying literature as a means to help students develop a stronger understanding of themselves and their worlds which leads to a positive impact on their overall long-term success. A key component of achieving this is through inquiry units. I started out the year intending to have inquiry focal questions all year long but it has not happened. The book was a good reminder to layer that essential component in for the remainder of the second half of the year. 

The book provided me with plenty to consider with cognition, analysis, and inquiry, so I look forward to trying out some of their ideas and then revisiting the book again later in order to remind myself of other aspects that I will not be able to immediately implement.