It has been a long time since my last update. Nevertheless, lots has been happening in my classes and with my students.
I have continued to have all of my 7th and 8th grade science students (all 100 of them) post weekly assignments to my class blog. Typically this means that they read an article that is related to science, then prepare a brief summary and (more importantly) a reflection expressing their reaction(s) to the article. The second part of this typical assignment is for the students to post comments on the work of 3 other students. (This blog work is all done anonymously to give the students the freedom to be themselves as well as some protection from the outside world.)
This has been good for a number of reasons. As I have been told by other teachers using blogs, this public forum tends to have the effect of improving the work of all students. This has definitely happened. I can say without flinching that the work fo each of my students has improved over the past 15 or so weeks. Frankly, I cannot think of many other things I could do (or do do) to produce that kind of result.
But there are other reasons why this blogwork has been valuable. The place of learning has extended beyond the classroom and school walls, and the students are engaged in a weekly discussion on their own. This work has some permanence. I can have the students (and I have done this) look back over the blog postings to and reflect on their progress. And the learning is taking place in public. Now I have about 1500 samples of student work, from a heterogeneous group of students across most of a school year. At any point, I can refer them to other students’ work as exemplars of some discussion or another.
I look forward to what is coming next.
