Day 12 of 20 Days to BlogTastic - Amazing Writers

We're going back to looking at success today with a challenge about writing success.  This is day 12 of 20 Days to BlogTastic, if you'd like more information about this training please click here

Writing is a great learning area to showcase on your blog and can be given so much more purpose when it's integrated into your blog. 

Here are a few ways to use your class blog during writing time...

• Brainstorming and planning for writing in a digital format
• Adding comments to your blog posts that are Kind, Specific and Helpful via text or recording them via voice messages 
• Commenting on other classes blog posts and linking back to you or your class blog as evidence
• Recording their finished writing and posting it to your class blog
• Publishing writing in a digital form
• Adding opinions on a topic into post comments or recording opinions using a service like croak.it

Brainstorming
There are plenty of ways to brainstorm both digitally and using good old pen and paper.  Why not post your brainstorms to the class blog so students can easily refer back to them during writing time. It's also a great start for what students already know about a topic, where they might take a topic and their current opinions before a topic begins. 

I really enjoy using Padlet in the classroom as it's simple and easily reached using most devices.  It's also easy to add images and video to a Padlet - just double click to add something to the wall the click the image or video picture and add your link.  

You don't need an account to create a Padlet wall but it does make it easier to track and remember all the Padlet's you've created.

Here's a video that explains how to add a padlet wall to a blog post

Commenting
Having a post setup that students comment on can be a useful writing activity.  An opinion piece is useful, or something they need to make a statement about or a judgement on.  If you're using a daily maths graph as explained in the daily statistics post challenge you might like to get students to comment on what the graph shows or doesn't show and how they feel about this.  You could also use news headlines, if you're working with younger students Kiwi Kids news can be a great starting point. 

Refer back to the Blog Settings videos in Day 1's challenge and the blog settings videos, to ensure you've made commenting on Blog posts really easy for your students.

Publishing writing
Publishing writing on a blog gives students another audience for their writing and allows for feedback from a wider range of readers rather than just the teacher all the time.  If all of your students are going to be publishing writing on a regular basis you might consider setting up a class writing blog in addition to your class blog. Students having their own blogs is another great option for publishing writing.

There are many different ways to publish writing in a digital form.  

If you haven't already seen the interesting ways series curated by Tom Barret take a peek, lots of great ideas from many educators all over the world.  Tom has collected the crowd sourced documents on one page.  A fantastic resource, and there's one on Supporting writing in the classroom.

Jacqui Sharp published this slideshare a few years ago with loads of different ideas, some of these are now unavailable but worth a look for a variety of different ideas on publishing writing. 

Apps and Other Options If you have access to an iPad try a few of these apps, remember most of these save to your camera roll and can be uploaded to your blog via youtube or vimeo or in the case of Easy Blogger connect directly to your blog.
- EasyBlogger
- Puppet Pals
- Comic Life
- Write About This NZ Version
- ToonTastic (Free)
- TeleStory (Free)

Or why not just use the camera app and get students to record a video - remember if you've got access to a GAFE (google apps for education account) and have YouTube turned on you can easily upload that video to YouTube to post onto your blog.

Youtube is great for using on Chromebooks, desktops and laptops as well - remember you can record directly to YouTube using your webcam.  

As explained in Day 10 Vocaroo and Croak.it are great ways of recording audio - you could post a photo of students writing / illustrations to your blog and then embed the Vocaroo or link to Croak.it to hear them reading their writing.

Choose a piece of writing from 1 or 2 of your students and work with them to publish it in a digital form.  Remember to label your post with the students name and writing publishing or something similar.

If you're not in a position to have access to students writing try setting up an opinion, problem or statistics post that the students need to comment on.

Remember to share your blog address in the comments once you're done so that we can take a peek at your awesome efforts.

Have you completed the challenge?

Remember to update your challenge spreadsheet!  

If you'd like to join the challenge please click here for more information

See you tomorrow!