What Led Me to Blogging?

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As educators, most of us have experienced a challenging class or two, the kind that requires new teaching tricks to capture and maintain their attention as well as ways to engage and motivate the students to be learners. My initial research began when I had a very challenging class of students where student engagement was low and very much contagious. I sought new ways to try to increase engagement and achievement and found Whole Brain Teaching strategies to be very effective with that challenging class. Many of those strategies have become second nature in my teaching practice and I found my new class of students to be much more engaged. The classroom climate was conducive to learning and students were eager to demonstrate the strong learners they are.

One of my passions as a teacher has been facilitating discussions based on the literature we experience together, be it a read aloud or a read together book. I am constantly impressed by the deep connections students make and their growing ability to share their thoughts. Due to limited time, I often have to limit the number of student responses during class discussions and I always wished that we had the time to hear from every student.

While my students were always eager to share their ideas during a discussion, when they were asked to write about their reading, in many cases, the enthusiasm went right out the window and they simply completed the writing to complete the assignment knowing that most likely, myself as their teacher and perhaps their parents would be their only audience.

When we participated in the Global Read Aloud is when I first partnered with another class in Indiana and we began a Virtual Book club where we met weekly using Google's Hangouts to discuss the current book both classes were reading. Students took turns asking and answering questions during our video calls. I then decided to introduce my students to blogging through Kidblog in hopes of connecting with students around the world. We had already spent considerable time on what it means to be a digital citizen so after a quick review, I started asking students to respond to discussion questions through a blog post. After posting their responses, they were to read and comment on their peers posts.



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I created the infographic above illustrating the benefits of blogging, using Piktochart, a free site to create infographs.

I noticed the quality of student writing was much greater and it was evident that the enthusiasm for reading and sharing had returned to their writing now that they had an authentic audience reading their writing. Students learned how to create blog posts that would invite conversation by asking a question. In using this digital tool, students can carry on with multiple conversations while sharing their thoughts and perspectives and reading those of their peers.

Not only has engagment improved significantly, but our already close classroom community has grown stronger. Students are getting to know one another as blogging has given every student a voice - even a student with selective mutism that had been very isolated before we began blogging. Because I had read her writing and learned her thoughts and perspective, I felt I knew her but now she has a voice and a strong presence with her peers and they have a better understanding of who she is and her confidence has grown as a result.

Some of my Favorite Tools and Resources for Student Engagement

Click on any of the images above to access their websites and learn more information.

Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids - A book by founder of Whole Brain Teaching, Chris Biffle.
Whole Brain Teaching Video - A short overview of Whole Brain Teaching
Whole Brain Teaching Website - A link to the Whole Brain Teaching website 
Global Read Aloud - A link to the Global Read Aloud Website
Kidblog - A link to the KidBlog website - a blogging platform designed to help students publish writing safely online
EduBlogs - A link to the EduBlogs website - a blogging  platform for educational purposes
Edmodo - A link to the Edmodo website - an online networking application for teachers and students
Padlet - A link to Padlet - a virtual wall that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic 

For more information, visit my How-To link on the right.

LESSONS

HOW-TOs

REFERENCES

ASSESSMENT