As a kid that grew up in the late 60's to late 70's, I remember having to journal for my portfolio. No, not just any journal entry, but the best samplings of the many journal writings that I wrote over that particular school year. I also remember that portfolio followed me from the time I entered elementary school until the time I entered middle school. To this day I have always wondered what happened to my portfolio. Only God knows!
As a teacher, I have seen the very same portfolio surface with students who have transferred to my school. What do we do with them? Well, we usually put them in their personal files and send them to the next grade as they pass along. Do we do any sample writing? No we do not have time. Since the arrival of the "No Child Left Behind Law", teachers have to make sure students are prepared for state testing. We no longer have the time for creativity. What a shame. I believe blogs is a good substitute for those portfolios that I had to do back in the day.
While researching, trying to find the usefulness of blogs in the classroom, I came across a site called Teachers First. This site gave an abundance of ideas on how to implement blogs in your daily lessons (www.teacherfirst.com)
I will list the ones that I deemed useful in the second to the fifth grade classroom.
Ideas on How to Use Blogs in Your Classroom
1. Post a prompt- you can post a prompt that your students will have to respond to. It can relate to your lessons or it can be something personal.
2. Week in review- Appoint a weekly blog team to write that week's blog entry, describing the events of the week in room ABC. A great way to strengthen summarizing skills!
3. Response to reading- practice good reading strategies and check comprehension by asking students to respond to an assigned reading reflecting on how it applies to their own experience
4. Critique a web site- post a link to a web site related to a topic you are studying and invite students to give their personal evaluations
5. Comment current events- post a link to a current event or story and ask students to comment on its implications in your local community to their own lives.
6. Report on a vacation or long weekend- instruct them to use their five senses to describe it.
7. Post from and 'educational trip"
8. Report on a field trip-allows you to see what they learned
9. Write about historical landmarks- research and add pictures
10. Suggestion box blog- suggestions about how to better classroom, or lessons taught
11. Complaint box blog- instead of them complaining to you, they can complain to the blog!
12. Question blog- works like a KWL chart, but online! Good for assessing background knowledge of a topic before it is taught.
13. Continuing stories- start a story and allow students to add 1 to 2 sentences until the story is complete.
There you have it. My pick of a long list of ideas. I hope you visit this site and bookmark it like I did. I am sure I will be using this site in the future. Oh, by the way, this site will also show you how to set up an educational blog site that is safe and advertisement free. Happy searching!
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