Class Blog

I was teaching persuasive writing to my grade 6's and wanted to fine ways to make it fun.  I set up centres (I always love to set up centres!) and created a Blog Centre using Kidblog.  It's free and meant for teachers and students to use.  It's a wonderful resource, very user friendly and gives the teacher ultimate control.  I set up accounts for everyone so all they would have to do was go to our class site, find their name on a drop down menu and type in a class password.  I gave all students and administration the same easy to remember password but gave myself something different.  Students are able to comment on each other's work but it is not visible until the teacher approves it from their own account.  This prevents bullying or criticism and I was pleased to see how encouraging students were to one another and how they would post questions and answers back and forth.  I made cards for the centre with blog topics to ensure that all blogs stuck to the persuasive model we had been learning.  This became such a hit, I was being asked if they could stay in at recess and during lunch to work on their blogs.  Students would blog at home and my biggest problem for the month was asking them to stop blogging from time to time.