The focus of today’s learning is to read. To read blogs and leave comments where you feel you want to. Try to respond to the students’ ideas as you are reading and refer to these ideas in your comment. Make sure you put in your blog URL (web address for your blog so the person you are commenting to can read and respond to your ideas as well. Try to read a few of the posts on each of these blogs and comment on at least one from each in this lesson. Then if you have time write a blog post on yyour own blog reflecting on the experience of reading the ideas of students that you don’t know. Did you learn anything interesting? What was it? Tell us what you think. Here are the sites I would like you to visit:
Year 9 student from Korea
Another year 9 student from Korea
A third student from Korea
A sixteen year old bass player’s blog
Year 8 student from New Zealand
Billabong Sport Blog
Another Year 8 student from New Zealand
Here we are at the last day and the start of the holidays. It would be great for you to write a post about what you are doing in the holidays. Try to write two or three paragraphs about good things you hope for, things that you want to do, and where you may find yourself travelling. I don’t just mean literally. Sometimes we travel in other ways, though reading, watching films, through conversation with others who have travelled. Or maybe you just have places you wish to go in the future and find yourself thinking about these places. For me it is Scandinavia. I sometimes look at websites and maps about places I hope to go to sometime in Norway and Sweden. Where will you go?
This lesson, after you have written your post, have a look at who you could add to your the blogroll and put them on. Look at some other blogs of people you don’t know very well and leave some comments. I would also like you to welcome a new blogger to our class blogroll from another year 9 class in our school. Check Meagan’s blog and leave a comment as well.
It’s just about the end of semester! And you have been learning a lot in English, although sometimes you might not think so. There have been books you’ve read, films you’ve seen, exams to get through, essays to write, speeches to present and hearing what other class members think in class discussions. And of course there’s all the things that happen outside of school too, things that have even more impact and where you can learn important life lessons. This lesson I would like you to reflect back on all you have learnt, both in school and out of school in any classes you’ve had or experiences you’ve gone through, both good and bad, and write a post entitled: “Things I’ve learnt so far this year.”
I am looking forward to reading what you write and so are all of your blog readers. When you finish you may like to spend some time writing about what you hope from the holidays . Good Luck!
Hello class, the subject that’s on my mind at the moment is commenting on other people’s blogs. How do we do that? there are some comment starters that help us to think of things to say, which I will include later on in this post. But first of all - why comment? And who cares how we comment? Commenting shows the writer that they have an audience. It encourages them to write better and to write more. It makes the writer think and also makes other readers think as well. So comments are very important and how we comment makes a difference. Here are some sentence starters for useful comments:
This made me think about…….
I wonder why…….
Your writing made me form an opinion about…….
This post is relevant because…….
Your writing made me think that we should…….
I wish I understood why…….
This is important because…….
Another thing to consider is…….
I can relate to this…….
This makes me think of…….
I discovered…….
I don’t understand…….
I was reminded that…….
I found myself wondering…….
I got these from Anne Davis who is a teacher in the United States who has been blogging with students for a long time
Welcome back from your holidays. As you can see the class blog has changed its title to The Future of Learning. What you think about the future of learning now that we have all these new ways to learn? (I’m not thinking just of the electronic whiteboard here, but all sorts of new things since you were in primary school.) Do you think learning is only something that happens in school or do your learn at home, on holidays, in your sporting teams or work if you have a job, or in other places? Do you use the internet to learn at home? A 15 year old I was talking to recently said that he learnt a lot about current affairs and what’s going on in the world through a forum he is on. Do you participate in any forums? What have you learnt recently?
Write about this or any topic you are interested in, then read some other blogs and leave comments about what they have written. Have fun!
Your blogs are looking great. There’s lots to learn about blogging but one of the best things is that it’s a way of getting your voice out there and knowing that people are reading. This lesson it would be great if you had an explore of your site, maybe added some of your classmates to blogroll and wrote a piece that introduces you and what you’re interested in. If you’ve already done that maybe write something about what you think would make the world a better place. Then read some of the blogs from the school at Snow Lake in Canada and leave a comment if you like.
Welcome to our exciting new adventure. To make this a good learning tool it is expected that you will write blog entries every week and comment (briefly) on lots of your classmates’ blogs. You will be writing about the the things you are learning in English, and other things you are interested in. How long you make your entries is up to you, just make sure you write at least once a week. You can write at school or from home and you can also read your classmates’ blogs either way. Good luck with your learning and reflection!
