In the comments section, the students in Writing 10, who have been blogging for almost a month now, give you advice on how to write entertaining, engaging blogs that encourage conversation; and how to write thoughtful, interesting comments that continue the conversation.
(You could also, of course, look at “I’m a Blogger!” and “Continue the Conversation” up at the top of the main class blog for suggestions.)
Writing 10 students? What do they need to know?
This week has been mostly focused around our inquiry projects – which are in essence the “unit test” of our work with the Vikings and Franks. We’ve spent two-and-a-half months on this learning, with an entire week just on preparing our projects to share with an authentic audience.
On Wednesday, many students were unprepared. On Thursday, almost everyone had finished and presented their project. Some of them were amazing, most of them met the learning targets. So why am I having you redo them?
One of the things I’ve really been struggling with as a teacher is how much support to give. I want all of you to succeed – but more than that, I want all of you to learn. I put a lot of myself (time, effort, passion) into the lessons that I create. I work really hard to try to ensure that everyone is challenged but not overwhelmed, that you are able to learn at your own pace but also held to high standards. I firmly believe that each and every one of you is exceptional. Not “sort of,” not “at certain things” … exceptional human beings. And I want to help you see that as well.
Ms Rizzo spent a couple of weeks working with our students on how to write good poetry. From the beginning, they were told that their final project would be to write a poem about themselves. One student, however, recently described this assignment as “a bit typical.”
Yet a poet – or a writer, or an artist, student or not – must be able to turn the typical into something incredible. Invariably, teachers will assign you topics throughout your entire scholastic career – some of those will speak to you, some will not. No matter what the topic, however, your writing should be exceptional. You are learning the skills in this class to make it so.
Continue reading Typical only equals boring when you make it so
I’m noticing that several of my students are making the same mistakes when it comes to posting their Writers’ Workshop assignments (WWS) to their blogs, so here’s a checklist. Please ensure that the following guidelines are followed when you are posting to your blog:
If you follow these stylistic requirements, you will avoid me sending your post back to you as a draft multiple times. This first one is not counting as a late assignment because you’re still learning how to use Edublogs (and, many of you, blogging in general); future assigned posts that have these mistakes, however, will be considered late. Remember to use the “Preview” button to let you see what your post will look like on your blog before you submit it for review.
If you’re not sure how to do something, check with me before or after school and I can help you with it – or post it early so that if there are problems you’ll have time to fix them.
Happy blogging!
In the end, it’s all about connection. Learning is being able to connect with ideas, with people, with new places and new situations, with yourself, with the world around us. Students learn better if their teacher can build a connection with them. We all learn better if we connect socially. Collectively, (connectively?) we are infinitely smarter than any one of us are individually.
Ultimately, that’s what blogging is for. Blogs allow you to connect with a community – sometimes small, sometimes encompassing people all over the world. They allow you to interact with your audience, and allow your audience to interact with you. They allow you to ask questions, to consider different viewpoints, to challenge your thinking.
Having gone through and read all of the genius hour blogs (the third ones, the ones where you chose what to write about), I’m realizing that students are struggling with how to write an interesting, informative Genius Hour post. Blogging is a different kind of communication, so the types of writing that we normally do may not always work. However, every type of writing should be interesting and engaging for your audience.
So let’s take a look at some of the common blogfails:
The This Then Blog Post
Today our teacher put us into groups according to what we were planning on doing for genius hour. My group and I all talked about our plans, but decided we were doing things that are different. When we were done, I went on my phone and looked at different websites about how to ask good questions. Then I watched a video. I think that next time I might try writing out some different questions.
The problem with this type of blog post is that there’s no real information there. When I read it, I have a vague idea of what the writer is planning on doing, a very long list of what she did during the period, and absolutely no interest in every reading another of her posts.
The Vague but Positive Blog Post
I was working with a group that Ms Smith created for us today. It was really fascinating to learn what people were doing! I enjoyed hearing Nikki talk about saving the whales. She was so passionate, and it made me think that she might be successful. She’s going to create a website with interviews with whales on it. Darren’s genius hour plan is equally incredible. He’s really passionate about stopping the deforestation happening in the Amazonian rainforest, so he’s going to raise money to send to the Amazonian Rainforest Preservation Society by selling wooden pencils. I talked a little bit about my plans too, but I was really amazed by how wonderful everyone else’s ideas were.
This person is really enthusiastic, and has at least provided some information in her blog post, but she’s completely failed to mention much about what she’s doing. We know more about Nikki and Darren’s plans than we know about hers.
The Hands In the Air Blog Post
I didn’t really get what we were supposed to be doing today. My teacher put us in groups, but everyone in my group was doing something different, so while it was interesting to hear, it didn’t really help me figure out what I’m going to do. I’d like to look at how to get more books in school, but I’m not really sure how I can do that. This is just too big of a problem. Maybe I should choose something else.
We know what this person wants to do, but we have absolutely no confidence in his ability to do it. For whatever reason, he didn’t decide to talk to his teacher about not knowing what to do when he was in class, and now he’s posting about it so the entire world can see, as if we are expected to come up with his ideas for him.
Most of the blogs that struggled in our last round of posting fell into one or more of these categories. What you need to remember is that we are writing for an audience, that we need to engage that audience, and that we’re not required to have all of the answers right now. We’re not even required to have all of the questions.
What we are required to do is write about our learning, our thoughts, our struggles, our interests, our questions, our answers, our process, our plans – all of these things and more – in a way that provides our readers with information that is interesting and prompts conversation.
I did an example blog post in my fake-blog as an example. It’s not perfect (it’s not meant to be), but it does provide an example of what I’m looking for in blog posts. Read it, and comment on that post about what you notice. What makes it different from the examples above?
Those Guys and the Super Smith Smurfs are in the midst of our poetry units – at the same time as the New York Times is having its Seventh Annual Found Poetry contest. Naturally, we decided to enter. There are almost six hundred comments on the blog post at last count, so for ease of locating ours, here they are. (This entry will be updated as students add their poems to the comments.)
Those Guys
“Goodbye Old House” by Asia
untitled by Isaac
Super Smith Smurfs
“Spooked Horse Throws Officer and Runs Loose Through Midtown Manhattan” by Alexa
“Why do girls tend to have more anxiety than boys?” by Taya
“Never too old to hurt from a parents’ divorce” by Jaylin
Today my Humanities 8 class began our unit on poetry … with “anyone lives in a pretty how town,” by E.E. Cummings. I gave it to them with no prelude, no pre-lessons on poetry, no explanation other than, “This is a really difficult poem – it’s one that I did during my first year of university. Figure out what it means.”
Actually, that’s not entirely true: I also reminded them of the work we’ve been doing with visual literacy. In order to close read a poem, you do pretty much the same thing as you would with a visual text.
We had a really thoughtful discussion. Figuring out that “anyone” and “noone” were both anyone and no one and actual characters in the poem who fall in love pretty much blew their minds, but they came up with some incredible interpretations. Check out their blogs to read more.
One of the hardest things to do is decide on a writing topic. (Or at least, it’s one of the hardest things when your teacher has told you that you have to write something in the next three weeks and isn’t going to give you a topic for the writing.)
Some people love the freedom to choose what to write. It allows them to connect with their interests, to share their passions, to engage their creativity.
Some people hate that same freedom, because they have NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE. It’s so much easier when your teacher tells you what to think, isn’t it?
Sadly for you, that’s not going to happen in my class. However, if you are struggling for a topic about which to write, consider the 301 Prompts for Argumentative Writing provided by the New York Times. Opinion articles are always fascinating – share yours with us.
Some of my personal favourites:
There are tons more on the site, so go and check it out.