Tackling Persuasive Writing Via Our Blogs

Venturing out of our comfort zones, my students and I are tackling our next blog post.  Our goal is to make you (the reader) see our blogging topic in a new light and to perhaps make you take action.

Anchor Chart

We started the blogging process back in October with a discussion about the different types of writing and/or purposes for writing.  A student made anchor chart hangs in our classroom as evidence of our learning.  Before each blog post, I encourage students to decide on their purpose for writing their next post.  Persuasive blog posts seem to be my students least favorite type of writing.  Therefore, we are embarking on this journey together to write a persuasive post.

Before we began our drafting, we revisited the characteristics of persuasive writing.  During a 10 minute mini-lesson at the beginning of writers workshop, I had students reflect on their prior knowledge to build a web. This was a student led activity as you can see in the picture.
When we finished with activating our prior knowledge, we began drafting our persuasive posts.  As the students began their drafting, they could watch me drafting my own post. Yes, the one you are currently reading!

Student Led Mini-Lesson

Even though we are writing blog posts, writers workshop has stayed the same in my classroom.  Through mini-lessons I am still teaching my students about grammar, sentence variety, attention grabbers, etc.  We work on drafting, revising, editing, and of course publishing.  The only thing that has changed is the fact I have embraced technology to allow for creativity and engagement.  Recently, I heard Ellin Keene speak at WSRA. She talked a lot about the importance of student engagement.  Her presentation reinforced what I've been doing in my classroom this year with blogging.   As I look out at my students right now, I see my students in various stages of the writing of their persuasive blog posts.  Some students are brainstorming with others at their tables.  Some are typing their drafts in a Google doc. Some are researching their topic for information or inspiration.  They are ALL engaged.  A smile sneaks across my face as I snap a few images of them working.  It is a teacher's dream to see kids intellectually and emotionally engaged in their writing.   My students are creating!  They're at the top of Bloom's Taxonmy.

Many of my students love to work on the carpet--not at their desks.

So, why should teachers blog with their students? I recently posed this question to my students to gain some valuable feedback.  I was pleasantly surprised by their responses.

One of the most popular student responses was the fact that they enjoy the self-selection of topic. Many students also commented on liking the fact that they could add images, links, and videos to enhance their writing.  Another popular response was made about enjoying reading each other's blogs and making comments to one another.  Students felt like they were getting to know their peers better. And, they felt like they were learning a lot about topics that they did not know much about.  Listen below to  Leah's thoughts on blogging.  She writes a DIY blog, and has won a Bloggy award for best blog in my English classroom.

#MathSelfies

I know I have mentioned before that the sixth graders at our school are piloting one-to-one iPads this year.  As a result, I am constantly looking for new ways to help my students bring math to life using the iPad, both in and outside the classroom.

If you have contact with adolescents, I am sure you have come to realize that selfies are all the rage right now.  (True story: the sixth grade teachers started to see our students experience storage shortage on their iPads due to the number of photographs they had taken/stored on their iPads!)  I have had my students take pictures of real life math they have seen before on their iPads to use as support for blog posts, but I had never before issued a selfie request...so I thought maybe it was time I did.

Thank you to Erin and her mother for sharing their #mathselfie!

In addition to incorporating students' interests (ahem, selfies), there has been research for years that highlights the importance of parental involvement in education.  I thought our current unit on rates provided the perfect opportunity to include parents in the learning process.  The task I gave my students was to find a real-life advertisement (authentic learning task) and explain to their parent/grandparent/babysitter/guardian (an important adult) why this advertisement shows an example of a rate.  I also sent an email blast to parents/guardians to make them aware of the assignment and provided them with pointers for ensuring their children were on-target with their explanations, as well as some questions they could pose to further probe their children's thinking.  In order to prove this conversation occurred, the students were supposed to take a math selfie with their guardian and the real-life rate advertisement.

Thank you to Alex and his mother for sharing their #mathselfie!

When we gathered back together in class, we displayed the math selfies on the iPads and did a gallery walk to view the different photographs.  During the gallery walk, students recorded observations (science connection!) on a T-chart to note similarities and differences seen between the various rates.  We then proceeded to share our observations to create a class list, and we made connections from this list back to the conversations the students had with their guardians about the rates they found in these advertisements.  Not only did the kids have fun with the selfie assignment, this provided a great opportunity for dialogue focused on content-specific vocabulary as it relates to the real world.  To me, that's a win!

What authentic learning tasks have you tried lately with your students?  How have you provided students with the opportunity to bring their interests into the classroom?  We would love to hear your ideas, too!