We’ve been working on guiding 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders to write quality blog posts and comments and now it’s time to move on to first graders. Some of the teachers really wanted to start their students blogging because they understand the value in writing for an audience.

I started by asking if anyone knew what a blog was. As first graders do, they came up with lots of answers but really didn’t know the purpose of one. We talked about how we communicate with our friends versus how we would do so with people who lived further away. After a bit of a discussion we talked about the purpose of our blog (to help others learn new things, to share what we know and do in class).

Next I read a few pages of It Could Have Been Worse, by A.H. Benjamin. This is a cleverly written book where Mouse is returning home but runs into several situations where he is about to be caught by a cat, bird, snake, and more. Fortunately for Mouse, he manages to escape the would-be captors (although he doesn’t have a clue they are after him) but the creatures trying to catch him end up in rather humorous predicaments.

I stopped just before we discovered what would be the result of Mouse being chased by a snake. The students were asked to predict what would happen next. Without letting them give an answer, I said that they would be writing this as a comment on their blog. They were SO excited! We were fortunate to have some college students observing and they jumped right in helping the children log into the blog, guiding them to sound out words, etc.

As the comments were submitted, I approved them. When these were shown to the students, there was a lot of excitement. “Look, there’s my name!” “Oooh, I see mine too!”

After all were submitted, we finished reading the book. No one guessed what would happen to the snake and Mouse but that’s okay. They practiced predictions and writing; and enjoyed doing it!

Here’s a link to Mrs. Kee’s class blog.