Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Students Have Hijacked the Blog!

In case you couldn't tell already, some of my students have hijacked this blog!  And I am actually encouraging their behavior! 

Two weeks ago, I took over an 8th grade Language Arts class here at school and asked the teacher if I could show the kids how to write a book review for the blog.  These students had just completed reading a book of their choice (any genre, but it had to be fiction), and presenting their review in a book talk to the rest of the class.  What a perfect opportunity to extend their learning by having them write a review for the school blog.  (And for me to get lots of reviews posted)!

After teaching the class about the necessary elements of a good book review blog post, we talked about who reads the blog and how to comment on posts.  I also showed them my "behind-the-scenes" blog readership statistics (I have readers from all over the world it seems, even Qatar.  This is actually quite cool)! 

The last element we touched on was safety and security; for example posting under a pseudonym if that makes you feel more comfortable (or would make your parents feel more comfortable).  While I mentioned not using names such as "Juicy" or "Hot Mama" because it may not make us sound as smart as we hoped, I did not mention anything about stealing celebrity names...hence, our resident "Justin Bieber" who posted a review.  Aaaah, the things we learn for next time.

There are a few student reviews posted so far, and there will definitely be more to come.  There are 30 students in all, so please continue to check back over the next few weeks.  And please, please, please feel free to comment on their reviews!  This is quite an exciting feature of the blog for them!! 

P.S. I am correcting their spelling and punctuation errors before posting, but have drawn the line at grammar and word choice.  Their words are all their own!

1 comment:

danya said...

Aw, it's an awesome idea to have students post reviews on the blog! That's a fantastic way for them to get involved. LOL at the Justin Bieber pseudonym :D

 

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