Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Blogging in the Classroom
As I mentioned before, I teach middle school reading and writing at a private school for students with disabilities. Blogs would be a wonderful tool for my students because many of them hate to write and find it very difficult to put their thoughts into words. I always get asked, "how many sentences does this need to be?" everytime that I ask them to respond to any type of writing prompt. I have found they do a much better job when they type, so blogging would be a great way for them to express more of their thoughts and ideas without getting hung up on the handwriting aspect of it. I would love to see them responding to one another and really developing their critical thinking that blogs foster. Blogs would be a great teaching tool for me to use with my students because many of them do not know how to write appropriately on the Internet. Unlike most students in middle school, my students do not know as much about technology and have not been as familiar with it, so this would be a great place to start so they are prepared for the 21st Century. I think I would just start them off with posting appropriately online and responding to each other for a while before I had them branching off and responding to others outside of our classroom. Blogging is such a valuable tool though and I can really see this taking off in all classrooms in the future!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
A specific lesson that I could have my students use blogs for would be posting their journal responses and thoughts after reading a text. Giving them the opportunity to read the text and then respond to a novel prompt through a blog would really get them thinking and analyzing each other's thoughts. Critical thinking would surely be developed through an enriching activity such as this!
ReplyDeleteKori,
DeleteI also teach special education students and I think this would be a great way to also help my students with their writing skills. My students also hate to write but when they get to use the laptops in class they feel more comfortable with writing more.
Great Idea!
Gayle
You mention that your students do not know as much about technology as most middle school students, a challenge that may arise is frustration with the typing. As you start them off with learning about technology I suggest you also have the students participate in some typing lessons. Many students with disabilities have trouble with handwriting, and once they master the skill of typing will most likely find that they cannot live without a word processor for writing. The benefits are so great for students with disabilities.... the spell check options, the increased neatness of work, the speed that they can type compared to writing by hand.
ReplyDeleteI also teach reading and writing at a middle school, and I agree that blogs are a wonderful way to have students respond to prompts and post journal responses. I have found that some of my students who struggle with hand-writing their responses also struggle with typing. Do you see this being a problem with any of your students? In my classroom, I always have to make sure that I provide ample time for students to type an assignment, as many of them do not type at a normal speed.
ReplyDeleteYes! I have had the same problem a lot! It takes several days to type their compositions and many of students do not even know how to save their work onto a flash drive. So as excited as I am to start incorporating blogs into my classroom, I am also apprehensive about it because of their typing skills. My school does offer typing classes for the students, but they don't take the class all year and it takes several semesters before they really get the hang of it. Have you found anything to be successful in over coming this?
Delete