Interest...
Engagement...
Now what?
I felt like my inquiry hit a bit of a wall. I spent a lot of time in the beginning finding out what my learners wanted and needed from writing. I have explored various ways of chunking learning into bite sized sections to try and appeal to the boys. I have developed templates that has helped stop a full piece of writing seem to daunting. I have even looked into how the physical space of the classroom can be manipulated to suit the needs of the learners.
What I haven't looked at is how to innovate the way that writing is shared on student blogs. It seems a little bit odd to spend so much time innovating ways to increase boys motivation and engagement in writing, when the act of sharing the writing remains boring and unappealing to the kids. As a teacher I have a very biased view of a 5 paragraph piece copied and pasted onto a blog. I can skim read the the title and introduction and get a feel for the quality. It took a comment from another teacher for me to realise that learners piece of writing copied and pasted onto a blog post, is actually a pretty boring blog post unless you want to read it. For students looking at each others blog posts, writing posts are the least popular because you can't consume them lazily. It takes effort to read a long blog post.
So I spent one of my Spark-MIT release working with 5 of my learners to create ideas and examples of more exciting possibilities for sharing our fantastic writing pieces on our blogs.
Here a few examples if you want to check them out:
Flow chart
Book blurb
Read aloud section
Annotated Photos
iPad Movie
Engagement...
Now what?
I felt like my inquiry hit a bit of a wall. I spent a lot of time in the beginning finding out what my learners wanted and needed from writing. I have explored various ways of chunking learning into bite sized sections to try and appeal to the boys. I have developed templates that has helped stop a full piece of writing seem to daunting. I have even looked into how the physical space of the classroom can be manipulated to suit the needs of the learners.
What I haven't looked at is how to innovate the way that writing is shared on student blogs. It seems a little bit odd to spend so much time innovating ways to increase boys motivation and engagement in writing, when the act of sharing the writing remains boring and unappealing to the kids. As a teacher I have a very biased view of a 5 paragraph piece copied and pasted onto a blog. I can skim read the the title and introduction and get a feel for the quality. It took a comment from another teacher for me to realise that learners piece of writing copied and pasted onto a blog post, is actually a pretty boring blog post unless you want to read it. For students looking at each others blog posts, writing posts are the least popular because you can't consume them lazily. It takes effort to read a long blog post.
So I spent one of my Spark-MIT release working with 5 of my learners to create ideas and examples of more exciting possibilities for sharing our fantastic writing pieces on our blogs.
Here a few examples if you want to check them out:
Flow chart
Book blurb
Read aloud section
Annotated Photos
iPad Movie
I have really enjoyed the 'hooks' on these learners' blogs and can see that you are onto something here. So how does this support audience coming to the blog in the first place when there is reduced text for Google's search algorithms to crawl through? Would copying/pasting the entire piece of writing at the bottom of the blog post, underneath the interesting hook, be a bad thing?
ReplyDeleteHmm I had not considered this to be honest. Will look into how this might work. Thanks for the feedback
DeleteThank you Matt, there are some great ideas coming from your inquiry that I can share with the teachers in the Hornby Cluster. One thing that has worked well and may be of value to your class is the 100 Word Challenge - https://100wc.net/ - Ruth Blair at Yaldhurst has been using it as part of her programme to engage the writers as 100 words does not seem a daunting task and not a large amount of text when shared on the blog. http://standingtallstandingstrong.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/100WC
ReplyDeleteKia ora Matt.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these ideas. I have been looking at ways for children to present their writing through their blogs. This week we used Screencastify so children could read their writing while gong through their doc. It worked quite well and children enjoyed it. We will work on improving this even more as we go on. I will also be using a video like you have that can hook readers in.
HI Matt
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your ideas and inquiry with us. I find it interesting and helpful. I also have an inquiry on how I can provide opportunities for my year 5 class to have rich experiences with text. Good luck with your inquiry! Your ideas look great.
Kind Regards
Alida
Park Estate Primary