The Writing Blog (ADDIE)
This Writer’s blog will help the sixth grade teachers at Lincoln meet the California Writing Standard (2.0). Students write narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive texts of at least 500 to 700 words in each genre.
Analysis
From the beginning of this new school year to the end of the first semester of this year, the three sixth grade classes at Lincoln Elementary will be taking part in a pilot writing program designed to help them develop their writing and explore their interests by sharing their writing with a real audience. Students will be using personal Weblogs to post their writing to the Internet.
Design
A Weblog, or blog as they are called, is a special type of Web page that can be created and easily updated using a Web browser. Each new entry has its own date stamp. Each entry has a comments section where visitors to the blog may leave comments for the author. Each student will be assigned a membership log-in. We will limit posting only to student members the teachers have added to their Writing Blog community. We will require that student users are registered and logged on in order to comment. There’s nothing that says teachers can’t allow anonymous commenting on the Writing Blog, (although teachers will put all comments through moderation!) but we will think about using this blog as a place for students and later, their parents, to leave feedback or generally tell the students how great their writing is.
Development
Each week the sixth grade teachers will teach a writing lesson using a writing model. After the lesson, students will write an entry for their blog. They may choose the topic, but they need to make use of the skills taught in the lesson to help the craft their writing. The emphasis is on the quality, not the quantity of what they write. When students are done polishing their writing, they will post it to the blog for student and teacher comment.
Implementation
Students will have computer sessions every week to provide them with the time needed to complete their weekly blogging assignment. Students may also work from home. All that is required is an Internet connection and a Web browser. Students are able to save their work as drafts before publishing it to their blog. Directions for working from home will be provided.
Evaluation
Having a real audience is one of the key components to this program. In addition to receiving comments from their classmates, the students will receive comments from other sixth grade classes who visit their blogs. We will arranging for students in other school sites to visit our blogs and comment on the writing. Parents are also invited to visit the blogs and respond to the writing.
The weekly blog assignments will be part of the student’s language arts grade this semester. The students will receive a scoring rubric that explains the expectations for these assignments. The rubric will include a section for the comments they leave in other students’ blogs.
Visit the site at http://lincolnwriters.edublogs.org/
