{"id":15564,"date":"2018-05-07T04:16:51","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T08:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/?p=15564"},"modified":"2019-02-13T15:06:03","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T19:06:03","slug":"students-blogging-for-an-authentic-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/students-blogging-for-an-authentic-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Students blogging for an authentic audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting connected: online & with community members<\/h1>\n

\"student-ledWhat if there was a way to spend less time grading your students\u2019 writing, while also providing a valuable writing experience for them?<\/p>\n

What if there was a way to bring interested, wise community members into your classroom on a regular basis? \u00a0I think I discovered a way: student blogs with readers from the local community.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Allow me to back up.<\/h2>\n

This year, I had planned to teach The Great Gatsby<\/a> to a small group of 9th and 10th graders.<\/p>\n

However, given the political climate we\u2019re living in, I shifted.<\/p>\n

Instead, I chose to teach the new young adult novel by Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give<\/a>, which provides a rich platform to discuss issues around race and injustice. The protagonist is an African-American teenager who experiences her (black) male (unarmed) friend killed by a white cop, so the novel\u2019s themes include racism, identity\/code-switching, female friendship, and sustaining community, among others.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Moving beyond the “Page on a Passage”<\/h3>\n

As I planned the unit, I decided I wanted something other than the usual brief reading response assignment that I call, \u201cPage on a Passage.\u201d I wanted a writing task that would be authentic, that would still be rooted in textual response, and that would allow for rich discussions. I decided to ask students to create individual blogs that would be read by community members. It turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for students to practice tech skills, writing, and best of all, communicate with a more authentic audience.<\/p>\n

Here are the steps I took to get this project underway:<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. Contact adults who like to read and who might enjoy reading student writing.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Send a mass email to all of these adults (bcc works best). \u00a0Give them a sense of the time commitment, the novel\u2019s content, and general expectations as a reader. \u00a0I call their role: \u201can engaged consumer.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. As you get responses from community members, make a chart to make a list of readers, then assign a student to each adult.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Alert your students and give them clear guidelines for blogs.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Help students create their blogs (I used Blogger).<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Then write an introductory email to all readers once you have them on board; share the chart with student blog links.<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Write prompts for the students\u2019 blog entries.<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. Once you\u2019ve assigned a blog post, send email reminders to the community readers. <\/span><\/li>\n
  9. Thank the community readers (repeatedly).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In the four-week unit, I assigned four blog posts.<\/h2>\n

    Each one asked students to use the recently assigned chapters to comment on a theme or a concept we\u2019d learned (like double consciousness) and often to take it further and connect it to their own lives.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s one blog post prompt:<\/h3>\n

    “One recurring theme in The Hate U Give is the power of the voice.<\/p>\n

    In this blog post, you will be asked to find a passage from the reading that you completed for Friday (2\/2) or Monday (2\/5) that exemplifies this theme. Be sure to quote a section from the book (remember to include the page number) and clearly explain what this has to do with the power of voice.<\/p>\n