Finally , following Deborah's instructions step by step, I have managed to create a blog ! My first one ! And hopefully not the last one !
I had been thinking about new ways of improving my students' writing for a while. Talking to Valerie, my Peace Corps volunteer , we realized that she could have enough time to set up a class of creative writing in order to help our students to improve their writing skills as a secondary project , besides teaching English . She started the classes in the second semester of this school year but something was missing in the end . Our students' pieces of work remained known only by their colleagues and teachers . If we had had the idea of a blog our idea , and their work , would have been more popular and well-known .
Moreover , our children would have been more motivated and willing to produce something valuable and appealing . They would have spent more time to find out the right words, phrases, idioms to use and maybe they would have checked their grammar more .
The first thing to do at the beginning of the new school year is to create a blog for our creative writing class.That's the ticket !
Hi Cami,
ReplyDeletenice to meet you online :-)
I think it's a good idea to start blogging with students. If they know their work will be read by their peers from all over the world, they will become active participants of the learning process.
All the best
Arjana
Hi Cami,
ReplyDeleteI like your ideas concerning the use of blogs in your classrooms. Let me tell you my experience about that.
You know, I have the same idea. In my MA, I used the task-based learning model to develop my students’ (between 13-15) writing performance. First, I provided them with models, then we worked with each other (teacher and students) and analyzed the features of each writing mode.
After that, I gave them the chance to write in groups (I used the process writing approach). They began to write, rewrite, revise, edit and publish their final product.
In the final step, we worked again with each other (Teacher and students) and focused on linguistic features such as grammar use, vocabulary use, spelling and punctuations.
By the end of the program, they did very well and their writing skills were largely developed. However, I found that their works are known just by their classmates. Thus, I decided to use the web 2.0 tools in my PH D. Actually, we need to use such tools in our classrooms. Our students need to be heard outside their classrooms.