5th Grade bloggers

This year we are using blogs as part of our 5th Grade writing curriculum.  The big idea of blogs is that we provide our students with: choice (of topic, interest, etc.), an authentic audience (in this case their peers and families,) a digital platform to collect writing entries, and an opportunity to be creative and have fun in the process.  

In the first 6 weeks of school I taught various mini-lessons where students explored then created various components necessary of getting a blog off the ground.  These mini lessons included:

- What is a blog and why do people blog?  (We included various student authored "mentor text" blogs to help get the student excited.

- What attracts people to a blog? (we focused on identifying a blog's theme, design and writing an about me page to connect to an audience.

- What does a good blog post look and sound like? (See attachment for a guide)

- Effective bloggers use productive and appropriate language to communicate, collaborate and comment on each other's posts/ideas. This was more of a digital citizenship lesson.  (See attachment for a guide).

During these lessons, students have:

- Created and designed their theme

- Chosen the topic of their blogs.  

- written an "about the author" page

- Posted their first post.

- Began commenting on each others work.  

Some of our next steps include having students use multimedia (photos, videos, etc.) to make their blogs more engaging.  Using links to other sites / content to further connect their work and ideas, use graphic design to have students customize their blog.  I am also looking forward to working with our literacy team to embed writing mini-lessons along the way to help students fine tune this important writing craft.  

Thus far, my motivation has been driven by seeing how excited the students are that their work will be viewed and commented on by an authentic audience.  It is making them strive to do their best and most thoughtful work and this is an organic way to empower students to dive into topics of interest.  Has anyone led a similar initiative with a group of students?  I will post about this again in a couple of weeks and include a few examples of students blogs.  

Feel free to post any comments about your own experiences with a curriculum similar to this or questions you may have about my process.