Following on from the success of the Woolf Fisher Summer Blogging Journey in the Christmas holidays, I thought it would be cool to try and replicate the programme on a smaller scale for my learners over the April School Holidays. I pitched it as a "Blogging Challenge" and said there would be prizes for the Top 5 bloggers over the holidays. There were prizes for various categories including Quality of posts, Most posts, Creativity, and Audience appeal.
They could post about anything they wanted, but were encouraged to post about activities they were doing in their holidays, or things that they had decided to research on their own. I also created a small number of learning tasks that the kids could work on and blog about if they chose to.
Results
Overall it was a great success and a huge number of our learners engaged with blogging over the holidays. Kids were posting often twice a day, and about all sorts of things. We even saw kids teaming up and working collaboratively on blog posts, as well as promoting friends work on their own blogs.
Quick facts:
What I learned from the experience was that hands on activities like the paper planes, and the floating/ sinking experience were more entertaining and engaging for the kids. I would try to think of more challenges like this in the future. Next holidays the Woolf Fisher Winter Learning Journey will kick off again, but I will definitely be running another blogging challenge in the Term 3 holidays.
They could post about anything they wanted, but were encouraged to post about activities they were doing in their holidays, or things that they had decided to research on their own. I also created a small number of learning tasks that the kids could work on and blog about if they chose to.
Results
Overall it was a great success and a huge number of our learners engaged with blogging over the holidays. Kids were posting often twice a day, and about all sorts of things. We even saw kids teaming up and working collaboratively on blog posts, as well as promoting friends work on their own blogs.
Quick facts:
- Top blogger posted 43 times over the holidays.
- Top 10 bloggers combined posted 208 over the 2 week break.
- Learners commented back and forth via blogger, 100+ comments were posted.
- Learners worked collaboratively and communicated via email and chat.
- Teacher created tasks were worked on completed by a number of students, others picked and chose which ones appealed.
What I learned from the experience was that hands on activities like the paper planes, and the floating/ sinking experience were more entertaining and engaging for the kids. I would try to think of more challenges like this in the future. Next holidays the Woolf Fisher Winter Learning Journey will kick off again, but I will definitely be running another blogging challenge in the Term 3 holidays.
Hi Matt,
ReplyDeleteI am thrilled to see that you created an April holiday blogging programme that built on our Summer/Winter Learning Journey initiative. The results that you got were so impressive! It's wonderful to see that the students are so keen to share their learning and to support one another over the break! I can't wait to come back to Pt England in July to run the Winter version of the programme. It's a true highlight of my year.
I will also look out for the Term 3 holiday programme and be sure to post comments on the student's blogs. Thanks for being so proactive and for encouraging the kids to keep blogging over the holidays. Awesome.
See you and the team at Pt England again soon,
Rachel
Hey Matt,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for all of your posts. I am a teacher at Gilberthorpe School and I am always so inspired after looking at the ideas you are sharing on here.
I was thinking about the Summer Learning Journey initiative and how I could make it work for a small class of students - it is great to see the direction that you took it in. Also, it is fantastic to hear the engagement of the students was so high.
Thank you again!
- Kelsey Morgan, Gilberthorpe School
Hi
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of the Bp challenges ?
http://www.starters.co.nz/bpchallenge-index.html
There might be some hands on learning your could include in your next holiday blog.