#SOL18 3-31-18 How Do You Inspire Quality and Quantity in Student Blogging?

Kelly Gallagher says, “The volume of writing is the key ingredient. If I provide good modeling, but my kids do not write much, they will not grow. If I confer with them, but they do not write much, my students will not grow. If I provide a lot of choice, but they do not write much, my students will not grow. Modeling, conferring, and choice are critical to growth, but if my students are not writing a lot, these factors become irrelevant.” “Moving Beyond the 4 x 4 Classroom,” blog post, July 15, 2015

Each time I hear Kelly Gallagher say these words, it imprints a little more on my consciousness. Each time I think, Okay, how can I make this happen? And I shift a little more in that direction.

This year one of the ways I was determined to increase the volume of my students’ writing was through better utilizing the KidBlog subscription I’ve maintained for several years. Every previous year I have consulted the blogs of teachers who I know implement blogging well. I’ve shared a variety of mini lessons on finding blogging topics, commenting, etc. Then we’ve blogged occasionally throughout the year. This year I was determined to make blogging a more regular part of our writing workshop and to increase the volume of our writing in the process.

To accomplish this goal I set up a routine. Routine helps hold me accountable, and of course, a predictable routine also helps students develop a writing habit. While a few students write more blog posts than required, I asked everyone to post at least one blog per week. Students also know to expect that one week I assign a structure, genre, or topic, and the next week is student choice. We keep a shared list of ideas for the free-choice weeks.

In addition to increasing quantity, I’ve also been looking for ways to increase the quality of student blogs. Mini-lessons, creating charts and rubrics, modeling, sharing student blogs as exemplars—none of these were cutting it. Even expanding our audience through classroom connections didn’t seem to inspire some. As long as there was no teacher filter, some students were still using the blog to search for and post cool pictures—meme-ing without the actual clever caption. This didn’t meet either the quality or the quantity goal. So I put a couple of things in place, and while I’m not entirely comfortable with either, they have increased both the quantity and quality of our blogging.

First, I’ve set up each week’s assigned blog as a Google Classroom assignment, so that a new document is created for each student, automatically shared between myself and the student, and copied into my Drive in a folder called “Classroom.” My students write the blog post on the Google doc. After they click “turn in,“ I give feedback. My feedback consists of response to content, observations about craft moves, revision suggestions, and minor editing, all written as electronic comments on the Google doc. After students consider the feedback and make any changes they agree with, they copy and paste it into a blog post.

Blog posts that students post in addition to the assigned post do not go through the Google Classroom filter.

I took one other step that I’m still questioning myself about. I grade the blogs. Not A, B, or C, but a KidBlog specific grade. KidBlog allows three levels of sharing: Classroom, Connections, and Public. The teacher controls which blogs get which designation. I told my students that blogs that blew my socks off would be posted “Public,” and I would even tweet some out through our classroom Twitter account. This inspires some because if I tag KidBlog in my tweet, they usually retweet it to a much larger audience. If it’s an amazing book review blog, I tag the author in the tweet, and lots of times the author responds to the student personally via our classroom Twitter!

The “Connections” sharing level is for blog posts that are as high-quality as the posts from the blogging classrooms that I’ve shared as models. Left unsaid, posts that don’t blow my socks off and aren’t the quality of the model classroom blogs remain at the default “Classroom” setting.

Both of my teammates have agreed to join me on the blogging journey next year, so all of our fifth-graders will be blogging. I look forward to hearing their perspectives on how we can use blogging to grow our student writers and how we can make it more engaging for our students. I also feel a lot of responsibility for helping my teammates feel successful in managing the blogging in their classrooms. My sense of responsibility comes from my belief that blogging is a good way to increase the writing volume of our students, as Kelly Gallagher suggests we must. With that in mind, I’d love to hear your feedback about how I have structured blogging this year in my classroom, and any suggestions you might have for sustaining quality student blog posts.