Comment Guide, revised

Last year, I posted the comment guide that we would use with my students when we blog. Looking back on it, I think it's pretty good, but we'll add a few things to improve upon it.

Before we start doing that, we will have to revisit our expectations for leaving a comment. Hopefully they will recall our classroom discussions around leaving comments. We talked a lot about how sometimes our comments are the only way we are known on a blog or on the internet. We need to think about what kind of impression we are making when we leave comments.

Commenting Guide

Pertinent It should connect to the original post, or original comment.
Positive You want to encourage the author.
Purposeful Only leave a comment when you have something to say.
Professional Use your best writing conventions - capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc.

In addition to this, I've added another point:
Personal Greet your blogger! "Dear Mr. Arakaki," or "Dear Billy Bob".

My original post drew ideas from Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog: How to Compose a Quality Comment.

Blogs

We've started blogs this week. I posted this to my Monroe5A blog, the blog which I am using to model for my students this year.

First Day of Blogs

The students were so excited to sign up for their blogs today! It's been a few weeks in the making, but we finally did it. Everyone who came to school today was able to register their blogs!

During our Computer time today, I went with the class to help them log into their Google Apps for Education accounts and activate their Blogger services. Everyone was able to name their blog (appropriately, of course) and select an address for their blog.

In the next few days, we'll be experimenting with layouts, publishing drafts and preparing to launch our blogs to be shared. Watch this space for more information.

First Posts

The students are raging with excitement because today they were able to start drafting their first posts to their blogs! They were asked to introduce themselves to their readers and welcome them to their blog. We encouraged conversations and guided students to close their posts with questions.

A few students were able to finish drafting their posts and publish them. Take a look at them and leave them a comment if you could.

Dominik's Blog
Kamden's Blog

The remaining days this week we will start to post some of our writing ideas and start sharing links to each others' blogs.

Kickin' off with paper blogs

Online blogs have been something I have done with my class every year that I've been a teacher, and it's something I believe really motivates my students to write, type and think.

Last year, our building went through Write Tools training, and I really liked the explicit format of teaching certain styles of writing. We only received the basic training, and I am very interested in learning more about their genre-specific workshops.

Anyway, this year, I want our blogs to drive our writing block, under the structure of the Write Tools program, using Being A Writer to navigate the various styles of writing.

Today, we started our Paper Blogs activity. This will be my first time introducing fifth graders to online blogs. Last year, my fifth graders moved up with me from fourth grade, where they first met blogs. I'm wondering what difference it will make having fifth graders starting to blog as opposed to fourth graders.

I do have a few ideas already. I noticed one of my twentyfive students could not decided on a topic to write about. I intro'd the task by asking them to think of topics that they could write about for more than five minutes and here is the list our class made:

I gave him some time to think about it, while the rest of the class got busy writing, which always impresses me. They were fairly silent, with a whisper here and there about spelling. Just write - worry about gnilleps later! Anyway, I checked in with him to see how he was doing and to make sure he understood the task. He surely did, just couldn't decide on what to write about.

After fifteen minutes (I had originally told the class we'd write for five minutes, but before I knew it, fifteen had passed) we stopped the class and he still hadn't written anything. After a bunch of other kids stood on their chairs to share, I found out what the issue was.

He secretly wanted to write about hunting guns, but was unsure if he could or not. I got the feeling that in the past he was told he couldn't write about hunting guns. Maybe he was never given the choice, or perhaps he was asked to write about something other than guns.

Could just one more year of a bad experience with writing be enough to bring a student to the place where they are afraid to write?

Social Studies Extension + Computer

Once a week, my 5th graders go to the Computer Lab for an hour. I'm so very lucky to have a Tech Facilitator that is super cooperative, flexible and willing to let me direct some of my kids' weekly computer time.

At this point in the year, there are a few things that my class is required to do when they get to the lab:
- A Fasttmath lesson
- Any outstanding AR tests (at their own motivation)
- Check their blogs to approve and reply to comments (to maintain good PR with their visitors)

Occasionally they may have an additional assignment from myself or the tech facilitator, but often they are isolated tasks simply directed at practicing skills in keyboarding, word processing, etc. It is rare (and exciting) when I'm able to extend a few classroom units/projects into the lab, which the students can independently complete.

Yesterday was one of those instances where my Social Studies Unit had a built-in extension with a website, where information on the excavation of the Jamestown settlement is available. I posted the assignment on my blog, and prepped my kids for two minutes about their task.

They were to visit my blog to find the assignment, follow the directions, and submit what they learned. They had two options to turn in their work: leave a comment or share a Google Doc.

What Happened

- Fifteen students left comments on the blog post
- Eight students worked through Google Docs and shared them with me
- One student was emailed the assignment since he was sick (still waiting for him to complete)
- All students in class completed the task without me there
- Variety of responses from students

Need to Tweak

- Students who chose to respond with a comment were able to instantly view their classmates' responses on the blog
- Do I want conversation between students in the comment section of the blog post?
- Students who submitted their learning through Google Docs received an embedded feedback from me in their Google Docs
- Do I want to provide individual feedback to all students? Is it necessary for this activity?

Verdict

I'd love to do something like this again. Luckily, the website was provided to me by my resources and it was completely student appropriate. Finding the right site to direct students to, and also have it pertain to our classroom learning will most likely be the obstacle that would prevent me from doing this type of computer lab activity soon.

Comment guide

Inspired by Comments4Kids, I am planning to start having my students leave comments on blogs written by people outside of our school building.

This will be a pretty exciting next-step for my students and their blogging project.

Before we start doing that, we will have to revisit our expectations for leaving a comment. Hopefully they will recall our classroom discussions around leaving comments. We talked a lot about how sometimes our comments are the only way we are known on a blog or on the internet. We need to think about what kind of impression we are making when we leave comments.

Here is what we use for our commenting expectations.

Commenting Guide

Pertinent It should connect to the original post, or original comment.
Positive You want to encourage the author.
Purposeful Only leave a comment when you have something to say.
Professional Use your best writing conventions - capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc.