Helping Students Develop Voice While Blogging
- Being a proficient writer takes time: practice, practice, practice. Teachers should provide students specific, on-going feedback to help students improve their writing. With each draft, the teacher should offer relevant effective feedback that will allows students to work on specific skills.
- Just because you are a proficient writer doesn’t mean others will enjoy reading your writing; this takes time too. Proficient doesn’t always mean engaging (refer to the first bullet)
- All writing has value, even bad writing… maybe especially bad writing because it is a starting point and that is often the hardest place.
- If you don’t know how to start, just start writing whatever comes to mind without the burden of worrying if it makes sense – that will come later. Sometimes a brainstorm works well too in a notebook if you can’t jump right to the writing on the blog.
- Revision isn’t a suggestion, it’s a necessity – sometimes writing the same thing three different ways or more offers perspective, this perspective provides choice to the writer later for what best suits the finished piece.
- It’s okay if even finished writing isn’t perfect. Perfect is a writing myth. All writing can always stand to be improved, so when a piece feels finished, it probably is for now and that’s what matters most. Ask yourself, “Does this piece communicate the message I intended? Are all questions answered about what I’ve written about?” If the answers are yes, it’s done.
- Mistakes will happen on blogs – it’s okay, we’re all human and we all mistakes. It’s even okay to leave the mistake up there unless it’s offensive. Students can always revise drafts or published posts later if errors are found. It’s all a learning process.