Media Sharing

I wanted to share “blogs” written by students in my sixth grade class. (KIDBLOG.org is an easy site to get a class blog started.) I decided to focus on student engagement through student lead questioning in blogs. Previously, students were already using blogs in the classroom. Here, students respond to a teacher led question and share with their peers their thoughts and points of view. Students understood that their responses were connected to a participation grade they earn at the end of the quarter. Though students were quite responsive to this activity, their responses did not appear to elicit responses from their peers. What I was hoping for with the classroom blog was for students to comment on their peers’ comments. By leading the class with their own questions, all students would be more active and engaged. Also, it would encourage students to blog more often and respond to each other. So initially, students only responded because their grade was based on their participation on the blog. Their participation on the blog closely followed their participation and performance in class.

I felt that students needed to take ownership of their questions in the classroom blog. This one-way teacher directed learning needed to shift to student-directed learning. This would give students more responsibility and freedom in conducting their learning by having them write their own questions to be responded to by their peers. This would last approximately four weeks. My goal was to increase the level of student responsibility in creating an ongoing classroom discussion through students led blogs.

I concluded that if students know that their peers created the questions and that they themselves will also lead the questioning in the blogs, this will motivate the students more to learn the information we are discussing in class and invest more effort in their work; that kid versus adult authority is a major factor in their increased investment in the class blogs.

Why use student led questioning to get students engaged in classroom blogs? To engage learners effectively with questions, teachers must foster a culture of questioning and investigating in which students are encouraged and willing to respond. Students engaged in the questioning process benefit from the clarification of concepts, emergence of key points, enhancement of problem- solving skills. Using questioning, a teacher can assess students' knowledge, determine needs for focused re-teaching, and encourage students to think at higher cognitive levels. Also, it appears that student led questioning may also stimulate interest, arouse curiosity, and motivate students to seek new information knowing that their peers will be reading and responding to their question

Blogs can provide students and teachers with an opportunity to engage in a safe writing space. Students can use this space as a foundation for discussion of classroom books. Also, blogs can be used as an ongoing conversation between teacher and students and among each other. It also offers a chance to explore different instructional methods and adaptations. With its many possible uses, this learning experience was aimed at getting students engaged and writing.