To Blog or Not to Blog: That is the Literacy Question

Within the 2^nd grade curriculum, writing can be enhanced with the use of technology and blogging.  Students come into 2^nd grade with enough writing experience to be able to create narratives.  We create many different types of writing pieces throughout the year and, as teachers, we enjoy publishing big writing pieces for students’ portfolios. Some of our big writing pieces are personal narratives, historical fiction pieces, informational texts, how-to books and biographies.  As an International Baccalaureate School, we will soon be required to create pieces each year that are part of students’ traveling portfolios that will end up in a 6^th grade exhibition of writing.  With that being said, many teachers are wanting to access more forums online to help digitize student writing in order to, eventually, have digital writing portfolios that travel with students up to 6^th grade.   

This year, right off the bat, my students and I jumped into our Role Model Unit.  We handwrote many pieces about what role models were and how we could be role models.  Then, as a culminating piece, we used the internet to research chosen role models and wrote biographies.  Students had to be taught the process beforehand and yes, it was a lot of leg work to help students get acquainted with the safe search engines, but it did work out to benefit their learning.  Students enjoyed writing their biographies and finding out more information about their role models! We even had a wax museum where students dressed up as their characters and read their biographies to their parents. Reflecting back, I do wish that I could have taught them how to use blogging to better share their ideas with one another so that more learning and collaboration could have occurred. My students loved this unit and still love it when I allow them to use different applications and websites to publish their work.

 I have seen a big jump in engagement and presentation levels from even my most reluctant writers when I have used technology as a tool for our writing. Currently, I am having students publish their “How-To” books on Google Slides and they are having a blast.  I did have students work with their 5^th grade reading buddies at the beginning of the publishing session so that the older students could teach my students all about how to add pictures, fonts, backgrounds etc. 

With all of this writing and publishing going on, I have seen some benefits and possible issues that could be had with students publishing their writing and ideas on the internet through blogging.  I have heard all about teacher blogs and have even read, followed and subscribed to a few of them myself.  However, I have not thought about student blogging as a way for students to publish writing.  Below I have listed some positives and negatives about using blogging as part of student responses and writing pieces:

Positives:

•     Student Engagement-Like I said before, my students love when I give them a chance to use the internet for writing.

·         Options for differentiating for students that need help with spelling, speech-to-text, or even predictive text options.

·         Students gain deeper understanding in certain subjects as they read and reply to other students’ blogs.

·         Great option for student collaborative, communication and presentation skills.

             Issues:

•  Students need to have well versed knowledge about digital citizenship and cyber bullying lessons before they begin blogging and research.
• Time needs to be taken so that all students learn each step to take when viewing, replying and creating blogs.
•   Safe student search engines need to be practiced and reviewed.
•   Students need to be responsible for their searching and creating while on a device.  This may require more teacher oversight and re-teaching.

Teachers are creating classroom blogs and sending out discussion opportunities, articles and books to review.  Students are able to log into classroom blogs and discuss as well as post links to their own blogs as part of their learning and connections to current learning.

With blogging, students are provided with an authentic audience to share their work with.  Students and teachers can provide responses to student work within a blog and that proves helpful while students are learning about a specific subject.  Students also learn about online safety, online communication as well as the different between positive and negative criticism.  As students blog, they are able to communicate thoughts and ideas that they may not feel comfortable sharing during class discussion.  The online forum provides students a venue to express themselves and show their talents in ways they may not have otherwise done in a normal classroom sharing session or book discussion.

Blogging and commenting provide a slew of genres of writing for students to engage in.  When students read a blog they are then synthesizing information, using textual support when commenting/answering and exercising providing feedback to their peers. As teachers plan lessons about teaching informative, descriptive, and argumentative writing, blogging may lend itself to help enrich students’ understanding.  If a teacher can create a mentor blog of a certain type of writing, students can take it and run with it in a way that is both meaningful to them and satisfactory to their teachers in means of assessment. Students also are constantly working on organization, sentence structure, vocabulary, point of view while they blog.  

What types of online student writing have you used? How has blogging been used as a resource in a primary grade? Have you created rubrics or guidelines within your inline writing endeavors?