Bryant's My Name, and Blogging is My New Game!

This week in my current course at Walden University, we are exploring the possibilities that lie within incorporating blogs in the classroom. According to Richardson, "Through the unique process of blogging...students are learning to read more critically, think about reading more analytically, and write more clearly" (2009, p. 20). What teacher does not want that from her students? Therefore, I must confess that I am ecstatic about implementing blogs in numerous ways in my classroom during the upcoming school year.

Richardson offered many ideas that captured my attention for how blogs might be used instructionally. While I am energized to try many of these, including posting class-related information and engaging my students in discussions regarding current news topics, his ideas about creating literature circles or online book clubs (2009, p. 39) using a class blog intrigued me the most. As I have been exploring educational blogs during the last two weeks, I found one class blog in which the students read self-selected books and post reviews (http://maggie-kidstalkbooks.blogspot.com/) of what they have read. After analyzing what this particular teacher's students had done on their class blog, an idea for how I might incorporate this into my own 8th grade English/language arts class began to form.

Each year, I assign my students to literature circles. Based on their reading levels, my students are given a list of potential books they can read, along with short plot summaries of the books. I allow my students to rank the books according to which ones they most want to read; I then form the literature circles based on that information. Once my students are in their literature circles, they are each assigned a different role everytime their group gets together to read. These include the summarizer, illuminating illustrator, word wizard, literary luminary, connector, and discussion director. (For more information on literature circles, click the hyperlink or go to the following address: http://litsite.alaska.edu/workbooks/circlereading.html. This site was very useful to me when I first started implementing this instructional strategy in my classroom).

In the past, I have simply brought my students together during closing time and allowed them to share their work completed in their literature circles with their classmates. Blogging, however, could take my literature circles to the next level. Regarding class blogs, November articulated, "The audience moves from teacher and class to the world...It is even possible that teachers do not have to work as hard to motivate traditionally failing students or to set much higher expectations for excelling students" (2008, p. 81). Instead of simply limiting my students to sharing their work with the people they see in class each and every day, my goal is to begin showcasing my students' literature circle work on the class blog. My students could easily type in the information onto the blog themselves. The only role that would need to be tweaked would be the artful artist; however, the drawings could be scanned in and easily placed on the blog as well.

There are so many possibilities for improving my literature circles that come with doing them on the class blog. First, as previously noted, the motivation factor would be very inspiring for my students. Knowing that their work was out there for people to read and appreciate would be very appealing to many of my young learners. Using the blog to showcase the fine work they have done would cause my students to take more pride in what they do and would likely prompt them to give their literature circle roles their best efforts. Once my students get the idea of sharing their work on the blog down, they could begin to engage in online discussions with one another about their books. I am thrilled to think of the critical analysis skills this could help my students practice. Furthermore, since other 8th grade students in my school are reading the same books, I could collaborate with my fellow teachers to see if they wanted to engage in linking our blogs so that all of the classes could share in analyzing the books together. It is even possible that the students could connect with other 8th graders from around the state, country, and even the world who are reading the same book. I envision discussions of interesting vocabulary, connections to life experiences, character analysis, etc.; it is essentially a teacher's dream! Best of all, the students would be highly engaged in the learning process because of the enhanced meaning behind their work because of its shared component. Sure, my students usually enjoy their literature circles because they select the books themselves and get to engage in discussions about them with their classmates. However, incorporating blogging as part of the literature circles will make the experience even more powerful since the audiences for their work and the voices for their discussions can become virtually limitless.

As you can see, I am very enthused about all the possibilities that blogging can offer for my students and me as a key part of our classroom instruction. While this will be my first year to implement this technology as part of my teaching methodology, I feel confident that it will be a successful endeavor--an educational adventure that I believe my students will heartily enjoy!

Fellow classmates, do you have any ideas about how I might improve upon my idea for using blogs with my students' literature circles? Thank you in advance for any suggestions you might be able to provide.

References:

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Copyright 2008 by Sage Publications, Inc. Used by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.