English Language Arts is a single class period where both reading and writing must be taught. That means being intentional with every minute, including the ones we have at home this school year. Blogging will be our weekly writing practice. For more information about why we choose blogging read this post. In addition to 4-5 extended essays, blogging will be a major part of each student’s grade.

The Process

Every Wednesday, since all students are working from home, we will use the time to practice writing. Each week’s prompt for the blog post can be found in Google Classroom. When students are first learning how to blog the prompts will be very important. Once we have a habit of blogging and establish some writing norms, students will have more freedom to choose what they write. The prompts may also ask students to write about their independent Book of the Month. This makes the daily reading assignments vital!

There are usually 3-4 different prompts to choose from, along with some questions to consider when writing. For example:

Write a letter/email to a character in your novel and explain to them why you agree or disagree with a decision they made in the story. Tell them how you might have done things differently and why. Explain to them why you feel this was a good or bad decision.

Students will choose a prompt that they have ideas about and begin gathering information. Then students should plan what their writing will include. The planning process is something we will spend more time on in class during the month of October. By the holiday break, students will know and understand each step of the writing process.

Students can spend their own time creating or adding images to their posts. How to make images and the copyright rules about this process will all be taught in class. Using images to enhance writing is part of our standards and blogging makes this an easy example. Any parents with a graphic design or marketing background would be welcome guests!

Be on the lookout each Thursday for a Remind text to visit the class blog for updates.

Grades

Writing is a skill with many levels. At the middle school, there are five major categories that the standards expect students to know how to do well. These categories include purpose, focus, organization, evidence, and elaboration. Of course, spelling and grammatical errors should also be limited.  As students gain knowledge about each of these categories their blogging grade will reflect their understanding of writing with these in mind. One of the great advantages of blogging is that there is always room to go back and make changes. If a professional blogger learns new information and recognizes that they didn’t include enough evidence based on the comments from the post, they can go back and make the writing stronger. The only exception to going back will be quarter deadlines. Once a quarter has passed there will be no more opportunities to change the grade given for a weekly post. The post can be rewritten or reworked as a new post in a new quarter, but the grade for the original will not be changed.

Aside from the content and writing skills being demonstrated, there is a word count expectation. Students needing modifications will be communicated with their personal expectation. Generally, all blog posts should contain multiple paragraphs of 500-1000 words. This expectation aligns with the base for standardized assessments. It’s important that every student learn to write in multiple paragraphs. Making it to the word count will help to increase their skills in providing evidence and elaboration.

The final expectation to note is that only published posts will receive a grade. So if there is a missing assignment on Progressbook for a weekly blog post that may mean a student simply needs to finish then publish. However, it could also mean there isn’t anything written. As long as students have access to the internet and a device they have access to their blogs.

Sharing

Writing for the teacher alone is not the best motivator. Writing for a worldwide audience is a motivator. In a separate post, I will provide detailed directions and a video about how family and friends can read and comment on student blogs. We also collaborate with other middle school classrooms who blog from around the world that will stop by and read our posts. We will return the favor and leave comments on their posts as well.

One of the first lessons in image creation will be creating a blog business card. Students will each receive 10 cards to hand out to family and friends in order to receive comments on their posts throughout the school year.

Another opportunity for students to have a large audience will be through our “Virtual Volunteers” program. We will be asking for family and friends who are willing to read blog posts weekly and leave engaging comments for the students. If this is something you or someone you know would like to be involved with please fill out this Google Form.

This is going to be a great year of blogging! We are so excited to watch the students grow in their writing skills and be able to share this with the world!