Our Class Blog

This may be a good time to think about what you have learned this semester. You worked on four different types of writing: your short stories, your poetry anthology, your personal best writing, and your family story. You had a Writer’s notebook; how useful was that? Periodically you added tools to your writer’s tool box, like thinking about writing style, adjectives and verbs, root words and increasing your vocabulary. You learnt about blogging, and safety online. You learnt about the power of blog comments, you learnt about planning and research and conferencing. What was useful? what did you find valuable? What will you take with you into future years? What have you enjoyed learning? I’d love to hear what you think.

Here is the class blog of Mr Fisher from Snow Lake in Manitoba, Canada. Have a look at two or three students and read quite a few of their entries. Then select an entry that connects with you in some way and write a comment about what they have written. The write your own blog and read and comment on some of your classmates’ blogs. Have fun
http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=2734

As you know your blog is a place where you can express yourself about topics that interest you and that you think will interest others. It is a way of sharing what you are thinking about and even working out what you think. Sometimes you can post on a topic and you’re not even sure what you think but because of the comments you get, new ideas come to you and you do decide. It may be a different approach to the topic to what you thinking of before you got the feedback on your post. Spend a little time thinking about what you would like to write about, and make sure you read what others members of the class are saying as well. They may really enjoy having you make a comment on their post.

Here we go again. Now that we’ve started our Personal Best writing project, stop and have a think about how you’re going. Have you settled on a final topic? What would you like to know more about? How is the research going? Have you thought of anyone to interview? Write an entry to reflect on your process and read and comment on some others students’ blogs. Looking forward to reading your thoughts Mrs McLeay

If you liked anything from the reading assignment you were given (The School of Voices or the Nanyang Girls High school Blog) you can link to the particular post you want to write about using the hyperlink function that you were shown in class. This means that you are sharing your knowledge with others who read your blogs. And that’s great!

Now that you have all submitted your anthologies, what can you blog about? Use this space to reflect on any of your learning in school, or out of school. What are you most proud of this term? Is there something you have learnt about out of school? Is there something you have learnt to do?

Did you know you can respond to other people’s comments on your blog by adding another comment on your own blog under the last comment, or you can go over to their comments and write your response, or you can write about what people have said in your next blog posting. It’s fantastic to have a conversation in this way and in this way you are being METACOGNITIVE. Of course the better the comments the better the conversation. I’m seeing some good reflections and comments. Keep writing about what you’re doing in class and outside of class to develop your anthology. If you find something on the internet that might be a good reasource for this assignment you can post about it on your blog and do the hyperlink thing that you learnt a few lessons ago. Keep reading other class members blogs and hopefully get ideas if you’re stuck.

What are you up to? Have you selected your best haiku for your anthology? Are you happy with your sonnet? Are there any difficulties, or really good things you could write about?

Please make comments on one or two other students’ blogs this week – remember to say something about what they’ve written. Two words are banned from comments: “cool” and “boring”. Hope you enjoy reading others blogs and writing your own.

It seems we’ve started being “metacognitive” in blog form. It is expected that you will write five blog entries by the end of term and comment (briefly) on ten of your classmates’ blogs. Over the five weeks that we do this you will be writing about the the things you are learning in ERE, especially the process of making your poetry anthology. How long you make your entries is up to you, just make sure you write once a week for the five weeks. You can write at school or from home and you can also read your classmates’ blogs either way. Good luck with your metacognition!