Blogging in the Primary Grades? Yes, Indeed!

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Blogs give students an authentic reason to think through their writing because they know their audience can respond to them. In this lesson, students read blogs written by students their own age and learn to shape a well-thought-out response that addresses and answers the questions posed in the blog. Then, after reading, discussing, and deciding what makes a good blog entry or comment, students create their own response to a teacher-created blog entry to discuss the sequel possibilities of a favorite book.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

• Jennifer Nelson: Digital Learning from Room 118: Use this website as an example of how to create a blog with your students and as a place to interact with another class’s blog at the end of the lesson.
  
  
• Literature Response Blog Rubric: Use this rubric as an evaluation tool for your students’ blog entries.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Lacina, J., & Griffith, R. (2012). Blogging as a means of crafting writing. The Reading Teacher, 66(4), 316–320.

• The authors present recommendations for blogging with elementary students using the experiences of Karen Arrington, a veteran third-grade teacher in Texas, and her journey to teach substantial blog writing.
  
  
• This article gives steps for teachers to follow in guiding students from writing blogs of little or no substance (penny comment) to writing blogs of substance (dollar comment) and includes a rubric to assess students' blog writing.

 

Zawilinski, L. (2009). HOT blogging: A framework for blogging to promote higher-order thinking. The Reading Teacher, 62(8), pp. 650–661.

• In this article, the author gives step-by-step instructions for setting up several types of blogs for classroom use. She goes beyond the traditional blogs and discusses four steps to expand student knowledge by incorporating higher order thinking (HOT) skills through the use of teacher-posted questions answered by students, which encourages students to think deeply about literature and formulate a response online.
  
  
• Zawilinski provides a synthesis scaffolding figure in the article, demonstrating discussion questions to help incorporate both traditional reading and the higher order thinking skills required for online reading comprehension and evidence-based blog comments.

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