Reading Blog

One thing I have introduced in my classroom this year is a book blog. After reading a particularly good book, students are encouraged to write about it on our class reading blog to share the book with the world. When a student posts, I will often tweet out the link to get visitors to our site. The kids LOVE to see how many people have visited. This establishes a sense of authentic audience for students, and encourages them to improve their writing, since they never know who is reading it. It is also a good opportunity to discuss how to write about the book without spoiling it for the reader. 

I created the blog on Weebly, as I find it really easy to use for the kids with the drag and drop options. If you want to check out their book posts, the address is:

 http://6breadingadventures.weebly.com/

Example Blog Post

Today, I am writing this blog post as an example of how teachers can share their amazing work with the rest of the staff! 

Below is the video about how to add posts to our blog

Why should teachers blog?

Why should teachers blog??

As we push our students to be 21st century learners, it is important that educators develop and practice the skills that we encourage our students to learn. Why should teachers blog? Without a doubt, we could probably all come up with a few ways that blogging could be beneficial. However, we decided to turn to the online community and find some reasons that seasoned bloggers and educators posted and shared to answer the question.

We found several sources that outlined the reasons teachers should blog. You can click on the links to navigate to the original sources. 

According to Steve Wheeler , teachers should blog because 

1. It causes you to reflect
2. Blogging can Crystallize your thinking
3. Blogging opens up new audiences
4. It can create personal momentum
5. Blogging gives you valuable feedback
6. Blogging can be creative
7. It can raise your game!

In an article by George Couros, he discusses why teachers should have blogs. He discusses how writing a blog allows you to look back at old posts and gain a perspective on your journey, and see how you have worked to improve. Another key point that he makes is that there is "so much we can learn from one another. We need to continuously work to create the culture and environment where sharing is the norm and learning is transparent."

Dean Shareski, in an article for the Huffington Post, wrote, "Want to create better teachers? I know how. One word. Blogging." Other ideas from his article include:

• A blog allows teachers to share practices and work as a team to make improvements
• Blogging allows a natural transparency to emerge- It gives others a look into what goes on inside a classroom's walls. 

Finally, Bill Carozza shared a list of 5 reasons educators should blog

1. Writing requires reflection and greater understanding
2. Blogging begins the cycle of collaboration
3. Blogging allows the writer a chance to have a digital home
4. A blog can help brand the writer and build your platform (Not totally relevant to us!)
5. Blogging encourages students to do the same

In creating this blog, it is our goal that each teacher shares at least one thing a month that they are doing in their classroom by creating a post on this blog (or more if they are comfortable with it!). It doesn't have to be something big or take you a long time.  We can't wait to see what everyone is doing in their classrooms!! 

Below are two more articles about why and how teachers should blog. If you are interested take a read. 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/do-educators-need-blog-posts-tom-whitby

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByN_OLXLIuI2ZG5UZVNDczcxR1E/edit?usp=sharing