Over at Richmond Elementary School, Darcie Rankin does an activity that helps students prepare for blogging.
Students create "paper blogs," which consist of the same components that make up a digital blog, but of course, are simply on paper. Blog topics can be about anything, and in this case the activity remained high interest by allowing the students to create a "post" where they write about their own interests. Read more about paper blogging on the RES Enrichment blog.
In the next part of the sequence, Mrs. Rankin has the students prepare to comment using post it notes. She begins with a mini lesson on what good blog comments are like.
|Options for the "type" of comment students can leave|
Next, students get sticky notes and are sent around the room to comment on classmates' blogs.
|Lots of movement and lots of writing!|
After each blog has a good number of comments, students receive a different color sticky to respond to comments.
Structuring the activity this way gives students a great way to practice responding to the writing of others, a cornerstone of digital citizenship. Likewise, it helps young students understand conceptually what is happening when they are publishing on the internet and leaving/receiving/responding to feedback.
Here is the video from Mrs. Yollis's class in California, which originally inspired Mrs. Rankin.
Over the next few months, Mrs. Rankin's students will be blogging. They would love it if you could periodically check in and make a comment yourself! Check it out here.