Yesterday we used a blog to facilitate our SODA (start of day activity based on Tony Ryan’s Thinkers Keys). The students worked in their groups to come up with their ideas. Then they commented on the post to record their ideas.
All the groups worked well and came up with fantastic ideas. I have developed a sheet that sets out exactly how to do their commenting.
Then I showed them the process I went through to moderate their comments (and incidentally demonstrated why I wanted the particular layout in the comments) and published their ideas.
Then last night when I was doing some more work I happened to notice that there was a comment awaiting approval. When I checked it out I was totally blown away.
While we have been learning about critiquing (voicethread) I’ve not talked at all about commenting like this in blog posts. This was totally student initiated – and Drew is a 7 year old, Year 3 girl.
It’s so inspiring when you see your students starting to respond independently like this.