At UWCSEA we like to empower our students to share their learning in lots of different ways. They take charge at Student-Led Conferences, and interact with various service groups as part of the school year.

In Grade 1, we wanted to add blogging to an authentic audience to the list, both as a part of our Digital Citizenship curriculum, and an extension to their critical thinking and literacy development.

The app Easy Blogger Jr (developed by teachers) was the perfect starting point. In Ms Robinson’s class, we first discussed what a blog is, and why we use blogs.

Grade 1 BRo thought that we use blogs:
– To share what we have been doing.
– To help us remember our learning.
– So people far away (e.g. Grandparents in other countries) can see what we are learning.

We let the class know we wanted their expertise in helping share their learning with others on our class blog. Discussions then ensued about what we needed to have in a blog post. We came up with a list of things to think about as we blog.

The class decided on the following:
– Use sensible words.
– Use pictures to show what we are doing.
– Use words to explain.
– Think about what we want to say first.
– Use a storyteller voice.

We then invited students to help demonstrate the app (we reflected the app on the interactive whiteboard so all students could see), and created our first blog post as a class. From there, students paired up and created posts about the learning that week.

Here is an example of a blog post Jack & Zakia created to explain the things they want to remember when blogging.

Why not leave them a comment and tell them what you think!