Recently, I read through my class blog that I began for my Grade 5 Science students. The purpose of this blog was to serve as a way to collaborate during our unit on Forces, particularly in the design of a model car, an application of the concepts learned in our unit. This is my first attempt at having students contribute to a blog. We spoke about what makes good comments (helpful, makes sense, related to post) and about using proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. We discussed the purpose of a post, making sure that what is written makes sense and is worth reading. As a class, we wrote a sample post and comment. What stood out, as I reread student posts and comments, was the difference in quality between some students' posts and their comments. Posts were written on pare with what the students are capable of, but the comments were not. Comments were full of errors, so many that it affected the meaning of the comments and therefore
contributed nothing to the collaboration I was hoping for. While I do plan on having asking students about this (we are on Spring Break still), part of my plan may be to have students read their posts and comments and reflect on them with some sort of worksheet to guide them. I would also like to have students look at good comments written by students on another blog (anyone have a good blog to share for this purpose?). I am hoping that this will reinforce my expectations as outlined to students as well as point out the importance of commenting.
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