Ariki reflection Term 3

In scanning through all to posts on this blog to share my progress since our first presentation, it is clear how far we have come and how much we have achieved in regards to increasing both the qantity and quality of writing within the class!

Personal blogging has taken off and there is no better illustration of this than students posting 19 separate posts on their personal blogs in one day.  The perfect example is Josh D who would never have written at home for fun and struggled to write at school.  In the last 10 days, he has made five posts from home, often getting his elder brother to help him.  This elder brother is not keen on writing at school either but they are enjoying the challenge of his personal blog.  Josh D's Blog

This, and the discussion at the Ariki presentation, brings up a few next steps to focus on for the remainder of the term.

Student Blogging:
1.  Give students more time for personal blogging in class.
2.  Draw attention to and celebrate student blogging within the class.
3.  Identify needs and teach writing workshops through student blogs.
4.  Promote student writing through Twitter more aggressively to attract visitors and comments.
5.  Unpack student comments, revisit and edit using success criteria to make them more effective.

AKO: Student's teaching students:
1.  Get students to identify something they are good at.
2.  Unpack and structure a workshop for KidsAKO.
3.  Test and adapt student workshop planning.
4.  Unpack the success criteria of instructions and commment on Weedons writing.
5.  Interact with Weedons around writing challenges.

It is times like this morning that make me smile, when a reluctant writer comes in before school and asks if I have seen the post he put up on his blog from home last night - three days in a row!

Student bogs - personalised tutorials

The frequent posting of writing on personal student blogs allows for a record to be kept of student strengths, success criteria achieved and teacher conferencing.  Although the best input in a 1:1 conference, evidence is given from the text, examples given and the advice can be re-visited on multiple occasions. This can all be done any time of the day - which is good as they keep posting from home at any time of night!

While our goal is to widen writer audience to gain constructive comments, those of a teacher are also valuable and hopefully motivational to students.