Today the boys continued to work on their blogging skills by posting comments on other third grade students' blogs...in South Africa!
Blogging benefits students in a variety of ways. It provides them with the opportunity to practice their writing in authentic ways, while focusing on being clear and concise. It also allows for collaboration with classmates, and chances for revisions based on immediate feedback. Our focus on commenting led to a discussion on giving specific feedback (a "praise" and a "polish"). We will continue to focus on this skill, but I am already noticing a difference in our first two blogging sessions!
I was looking forward to the commenting from the moment we located the school on our map, and the boys could hardly contain their excitement:
"I love soccer too!"
"I am going to ask what 'Netball' is!"
"Look, it's their playground!"
An unexpected highlight was when I received a message from the teacher in South Africa during our posting (despite the six hour time difference!), saying that the comments coming in were terrific! The boys crowded around to read the message that had traveled all the way from Africa.
Now our connections were starting to feel really real.
We partnered with 3D today and look forward to future collaboration opportunities!
This is great! Thank you Ninth Age boys. We are playing inter house Netball, Soccer and Hockey matches today. We will try to get a short video clip and upload it to SchoolTube. The children will explain what Netball is. They are going to be so happy to see your comments. They can also tell you about our stadium.
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