We have been learning about blogging and how blogs work. A blog works kind of like an on-line journal, and they can be about just about any subject. People write about things they are passionate about. Besides the fact it's on line and anyone can see it, one of the big differences between a blog and a journal is that ideally a blog should be a conversation. The blogger wants other people to read their blog and make comments.
To understand how blogs work, we made paper blogs.* Students wrote their first blog post on paper. They glued their post to a poster and decorated it to make it look like a blog. Then we hung them around the room. On top of the bulletin boards, on the white board, taped to book shelves. We visited a blog by a teacher in California, Mrs. Yollis, and watch a short video that her students made about writing comments. Their advice was to be positive and specific.
Armed with pencils and sticky notes we all moved around the room reading each other's blogs and writing comments on the sticky notes. We stuck the sticky notes to the blogs. Some people tried to sneak back to their own blogs to read the comments, but they had to wait until the end. When we were finished, everyone got their own blogs back and got to read the comments that had been left for them.
Now we are ready to write our first blog post for our on-line blogs. Soon you will be able to visit our on-line blogs at Kidblogs.org. Here is the link to our student blogs: Ms. Day's Class at Kidblogs. Don't expect to see our real name though. For safety, we made up screen names. Ask your student about their secret identity.
* I learned about paper blogs from Karen McMillan, a teacher in California. She is @McTeach on Twitter.
