Friday, June 08, 2007

Third graders on blogging

Third graders are pretty self centered, concrete thinkers, especially at the start of a school year, but by the end of the year, they are well on the way into thinking about ideas, reflecting on different points of view, etc. I love working with kids at this age.

This is the second class of third graders I have taken through a school year with individual blogs. Three days ago I described a nebulous writing assignment to them. Write about your blogs, I said. Blogs in general, blogging next year, are blogs good?, convince somebody you should be allowed to blog more, summer blogging, what age should blogging start, - I threw out several ideas, and asked them to blog their thoughts. There were several blank stares, like was I going to give them the assignment, or what? Then some ideas began to flow onto a few computers. Kids talked. We all looked at the writing of a few volunteers after 20 minutes. A head of steam began to build. They took approaches to this that were as individualized as, well, each one of them is:

Good Things about {My Blog} - AnaLisa
Why I should keep my blog - Ryan
my blog - Kody
My Blog - Chelsea
Why I Should Keep My Blog Over the Summer - Nathan
Why I should keep my blog - Christopher
Good Things About Blogs - Nicole
How my blog is doing. - Elyjah
Good Things About My Blog - Maribeth
About My Blog and Other blogs - Casey
My Blog - Lindsay
Why We Should Have Blogs Over the Summer - Jonathan
Good Things About Having A Blog - Riley1
Why I should keep my blog! - Keean
Good Things About a Blog - Logan

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, 2 years of student blogging! That is quite a feat and it puts you way ahead of many of your peers. I am a 3rd grade teacher doing a summer project on fiction writing and I need you (and anyone else that visits your site) to please visit and comment on my blog. Part of my grant includes connecting with teachers globally so I need all the help I can get!

Thanks,

Amy

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing your students' work, Mark. This will inspire many other teachers to try blogging with their students. :)

Anonymous said...

Great stuff from your students! I loved reading their reasons to keep blogging. Thanks for sharing.