Liederhousen

I went to Germany this summer, and this is a picture of me in traditional Liederhousen.

Bilingual-Sheltered English writing through core content

Teaching Bilingual/ Sheltered English through core content (science) is far more than a mastery of grammar and vocabulary. I want my students to be equipped to comprehend and make sense in a new language. Part of comprehending is to understand, to read, and to write in English, but another important part is to make something known and part of themselves. Of course, there are few experiences more satisfying than fully expressing one's self - especially through the written language.

Writing blogs in Social Studies could be very advantageous to not only the teacher, but
also for the student. I'm not sure how to use blogs yet, but I am very interested to find
out. I would hypothesize that communication and opinion would be very prevalent in
Social Studies. I would adhere to Mr. Henkels to help me with this social networking
phenomenon.

Blogging in Bio

Students can use blogging to express ideas and share information with each other. In biology, we can use blogs to have online debates about ethical issues in biology (such as cloning, stem cells, etc.) while they study the content. They can summarize articles they find and post links to them to the blog. They can also make videos/slideshows using animoto which is like slides shows on steroids. I could also post questions to the blog and have students respond online.

Blogging As A Way of Enhancing Writing.

Blogging can enhance writing in my course by encouraging my students to practice their writing skills in two ways. First, my students can practice their writing skills by posting to the blog. The more they post, the more they practice their writing. The second way that my students can practice their writing skills is by reading the posts of their classmates. By reading other students' posts, my students can see examples of good writing and writng that does not meet expectations.

I wrote this once and lost it so here is the abridged version. It would be cool to use with kids to talk about history questions, ask stuff about homework and class, etc. The potential for having kids write almost everyday would be easy.

Literacy In Science

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am having students in my science class summarize, paraphrase and reflect on what they have learned for each unit. The are required to speak and write in complete sentences on a daily basis. When grading written work we have developed a rubic and use the "Cops" grading system. The "C" stands for capitalization, the "O" stands for organization, the "P" stands for punctuation, and the"S" stands for spelling.

Blogging in Math Class?

I am having a hard time seeing how blogging would be beneficial in an Algebra 1 class. Students have a difficult time verbalizing math questions - it is even harder to get them to write. Maybe - the fun of using the computer will help them communicate better. To be truly beneficial in the math classroom, students would need to learn how to use some type of equation editor.

However, I believe that students helping each other has great learning potential. I also like the fact that I can follow all the posts and jump in to help as needed.

I have a long way to go.....

Writing in ESL classes

Writing is the area where Bilingual/ESL students struggle the most. They usually have troubles developing ideas due to the lack of vocabulary. Sometimes they have hard time writing even in their native language and it makes it harder for them to learn to write in another language. Some of the students don't see the immediate value in writing because they don't write every day. I hope that blogging will help my students to see more value in writing, to get more practice and they will be more engaged in the discussions that take place in the classroom.

Writing in Freshman Science

Recently in an IPS team meeting we started discussing what is it exactly we're trying to teach in our course. It's sort of the first PLC question - about what we want our kids to know. Should our students know how many milligrams are in a gram, or just that grams are bigger than milligrams?

How do we transition from Bloom's level 1 questions to actually asking them to synthesize knowledge, to compare and contrast, to make predictions and draw conclusions? But there's still a basic level of knowledge that is needed. I mean, in order to compare and contrast different kinds of volcano's you need to know what the heck a volcano is.

Could writing more in the classroom help with this? Perhaps. What are we going to have the students write about? Will the netbooks become that 'hook' that gets the kids learning?

I could use blogging to engage and enhance the learning process of my students. Students could respond to writing prompts, and post their own questions and thoughts on readings.

Using Blogging to Promote Creative Writing

Blogging can be used to start a spark among a classroom of students around any given topic. It is the ideal medium for students to make contributions to a collaborative creative writing project starting with a single sentence. Students will be asked to write a sentence (or an entire paragraph) that expands a storyline or take it in an entirely new direction.

Think of it as a form of digital improv, where the goal is to get the creative juices flowing and students generating new prose as the minutes tick by in a structured writing session. This will teach students to express their ideas using a variety of writing conventions. The teacher sets the tone, requires that certain structures be utilized, monitors the flow of student contributions, then changes the tables by starting a new topic or introductory sentence.

The main thing is to start the ball rolling, then get out of the way!

Enhanced writing in your World History class.

Realizing that each student will have the opportunity to use their computer to answer the blogs questions, will give students the chance to analyze and interpret ideas. In order to be successful, students will need to experience technology with writing and how the tools will be used. Practice creates a better opportunity for success.

Using Writing with Literary Devices in Reading

When reading through the "English Language Arts" Blog, I came across some interesting postings that would be useful in two English courses we teach here at the High School. One of them dealt with tone and diction, and the other showed how high school students could use their laptops to work in small teams while examining the color symbolism of various passages in The Great Gatsby. These came from a category called "Just Read."

Enhancing Writing in the English Classroom

Since I teach English, I don't normally have my students do much writing, so this will be a challenging topic for me to address. Just kidding. I think something I will be doing is based on a suggestion that one of our instructors mentioned, namely: have one student per day be responsible for blogging the daily activities of the class. This will make everyone be responsible for paying attention. Also, it will force each student to compose a blog entry a couple of times every quarter, and each student will, theoretically, do his or her best writing to avoid being ripped to shreds by other students who might comment on the poor writing/grammar and/or bad information reported by the student.

Writing in math

One very useful way to get kids thinking about what they are doing in math is to have them write a journal. Jotting down thoughts, writing down class notes, explaining the steps in solving math problems are all great ways to get students to not only improve their math skills but also learn to write better.

The possibilities that blogs provide are endless. There are countless ways to improve writing using blogs. Students can respond to questions that are posed by the teacher. The students can then respond to one another's comments. We can post pictures of artwork or architecture and have students react to what they see. Blogs can create a forum for students to ask questions or ask for clarification about topics that they are struggling with. The students can then respond and help one another.

Learning how to do this

What I'd like to be able to do is use this technology to augment what I'm doing in the classroom. But first I need to learn what I'm doing.

So here's my first post.

Honestly, this is the first time I've ever posted a blog, however, that's not what's important. While I could think inside the box and talk about how I would use this in the classroom, I feel that this would be very beneficial with our wrestling program. We could use this to communicate thoughts on what the wrestlers feel they need to work on and coaches could provide constructive criticism to athletes on their performances in both competition and practices.

Writing in Math Class

I'm thinking that one of the best things to increase the students' writing in math class would be to use a blog as a way for the students to post questions about problems they are having in class. In this way, I or the other students could post responses to the questions for their classmates. It might also be a good way for the students to post their own "real-world" word problems and have other students in class post their answers.

Writing to Read

Writing and reading are two skills that go hand in hand. In order to best work with one skill, the student needs to practice both. By using a blog, the students will be reading information posted by me and responding to it.

Blogging in the Classroom

Blogs are a lot of fun because they can be interactive and you can cite your research very easily. In fact, you can post a video that helps support your writing, as well as images, Google Documents, and and links to other websites. That is something that will hold student's attention, though it may be tough because all of these different forms of media can be overwhelming.

Blogging

I believe that blogging could have both positive and negative implications for school use. The positive aspect is that students will be writing with more frequency. The more opportunities that we provide kids will enhance their ability to write with clarity and purpose. The downside could be the language that the students use. They may think this is instant messaging and may use that text language to communicate in a blog. We will need to be very clear with our students on the specifics of the tasks and clearly delineate expectations.

Writing to Enhance Writing

Using blogs in the classroom creates an ongoing communication between teachers and students, as well as students and students. Teaching does not have to end at the sound of the bell; students can sign on the Internet and continue class discussions based on what their teachers can post. Blogging may be that push that would get students interested in actually doing work at home; maybe they'll think that going online and blogging is not school work. Hey, they can call it whatever they want, but if they are responding to questions posted by either the teachers or other students--say on how much some of them struggle with writing autobiographical essays, or even trying to pronounce the word autobiographical correctly--then they are doing school work! But shhhh, I won't tell them that!

Freshman writing

We can have the students answer questions on the blog instead of out loud to require participation. They speak in such a different manner than they write, but they don't realize the importance of the difference. I would require them to answer in complete sentences, which is something we're focusing on, and is something they don't do when answering questions orally.

Enhancing Writing

I could use the blog as a resource for my students and have links to websites that can help with writing, such as the Purdue OWL, or websites where they can submit their own writing to be published.

Also, students could follow my blog and be required to comment on my blog, submit their own posts on a specific topic or writing prompt, or submit a blog post about anything that interests them relating to the class.

Writing in the classroom

I find that certain students easily begin writing and it seems to flow well. Other students just have a lot of difficulty doing something that is unstructured. I can imagine that it will take time for them to feel the freedom to write whatever is on their mind in the context of appropriate school language, along with the "cops" concept of writing in good form

Blogging

Blogging can be very useful for both the students and the teachers. The teacher can post a blog and have each of the students answer. This can bring about different comments or questions in every classroom. The blogs could be fun and useful for holding discussions throughout the class. The blogs would also be a good way to have class debates about any given subject.

Blogging in my classroom

I believe that blogging in the classroom will be to the benefit of the students if and only if the students respect the internet. It will work to the advantage of the students in most classroom settings. The light has not begun to shine on the benefit in the math clas yet. I am still waiting for the bells and whistles to go off for something other than a place to keep a record of homework and notes that my students can download from a different location.

W.A.C.

We can have students write comments to daily classes. We can have students answer homework questions on a daily basis. Students can give opinions from assigned newspaper articles from the web.

Writing- US

Students writing a weekly blog will allow them to take ownership in the course. Ownership in the course will keep them more engaged and allow for more powerful teaching and learning.

As an ESL teacher, part of my challenge is to get the students to want to express themselves. I want them to want to communicate enough to go through the hard work of doing it in a second language. Writing in the second language is also a way for those who are a bit too shy to speak the second language (and too young to chug a beer to loosen up their tongues). I like for my students to have a variety of options to choose from when writing about a topic. Blogs offer the opportunity to provide links and choice to my students to respond to. It can provide a forum to introduce topics and create discussions.

Science Writing

I think I would use it for clarifying student questions about topics that I cover in class. I could also use it to help student collaborate about topics discussed in class. Perhaps put the students in groups, give them a problem to solve, and they are able to blog about their problem...
The options are almost unlimited. I am sure the students would have ideas about what to blog about as well.

Blogging in the library

Blogs on new or required reading assignments, might help the students organize their thoughts, add insights, or help the students develope different perspectives toward the reading material. It might also expand their research on the required material. A dialoge or debate might expand their knowledge.

Writing in math class

Blogging could be one of the main ways that I can incorporate writing in my math classes. The subject matter itself does not lend itself to writing, but by using blogs the students would be forced to write about questions that they have and I could help the students with the writing that they submit in their posts and comments.

How can school leaders support writing across content areas in their schools?

School leaders in high schools can enhance and support writing improvement initiatives by first reaching out to teacher leaders in their content areas to find out what types of writing takes place in their department classrooms and what strategies they use. This will allow school leaders to get a larger view of what actually takes place in different departments. It will also reveal gaps in teacher knowledge / comfort level with using writing strategies in the classroom. From here, school leaders and teachers can collaborate and begin to formulate professional learning activities that will lead to the development of school wide writing improvement initiatives.

Blogging in Algebra 1

I think that it is going to be difficult to blog about Algebra 1, but once we get going I'm sure it will get easier. I feel like students get lost in Algebra 1 quickly and are unable to do the problems because they get stuck on an initial step. Perhaps the students will be able to ask each other questions about the homework on the blog in order to help them get past their initial confusion about a problem.

I could try to incorporate more discussion questions into my class and then have the students answer the questions on the blog. The tricky part is going to be thinking of worthwhile questions to ask that still have to do with Algebra 1.

Enhancing the Classroom with Blogs

Using blogs in the classroom provides students with more opportunity to provide their opinions and thoughts with less stress. Some students, and adults alike, have trouble verbalizing their opinions on the spot during class discussions. They may shut off during discussion because they don't want to be embarrassed. Blogs allow them to have time to ponder and compose their responses to class discussion questions and comment to one another.

Mr. New's feelings on blogs in the classroom

Blogs offer a quick way for students to type their thoughts and feelings. I might be the only one that feels this way, but sometimes I feel like the level of penmanship has dropped significantly. While students can make the extra effort to improve their writing, blogs can somewhat bypass this obstacle allowing a much more efficient mode of communication. I am NOT saying to throw handwriting out at all. In certain scenarios, blogs allow for teachers and students to accomplish more in the time it would normally take for me to wait for them to write something, decipher their handwriting, and respond in the same manner.

Writing in World History

A blog ensures an audience for student's writing- an aspect that is often limited by time and mode in more traditional classrooms. In history, students can write responses to primary sources, make predictions of the consequences of historical events, and summarize readings assigned in jigsaw activities for classmates. All of these activities will have accessible records that can be referred back to for re-reading and analyzing by students while eliminating the misplacing or loss of assignments by students.

writing

Using a computer to engage a student to write, share thoughts,reflect, respond to questions whether with a paragraph, a list, a sentence or a 2 page answer. They will be writing and some writing is better than no writing!

Enhance Writing with Blogs

How can we enhance writing across the curriculum using blogs in our classrooms? Add your post.