Digital Literacy

Digital Writing: First 6 Weeks from Franki22

Fishing for Stories

Our last two days of writing camp this week focused on using real life events and sketching to generate details in our stories.  We took the boys fishing.  I know, me, fishing ; o )  Live worms and all!

After a morning of fishing we sat out on the back patio and spent some time talking about it.  I gave the boys an opportunity to really think about the experience and steered the conversation toward the details of the trip.   The next day we met again and spent some time sketching our stories.

As the boys were drawing they began to talk about the details they remembered and would then add them into their sketches.  When it came time to write they had written their stories with lots of interesting details and even some interesting embellishments that took their stories into the fiction genre ; o )

Of course the goal was to get to the digital publishing.  The kids love to see their work on-line and read the comments they receive!

All in all it was a fantastic week of writing : o )

Shake it up!

Today we took an opportunity to write a how-to piece as well as a reflection writing.  The boys sat down and came up with a list of ingredients as well as the equipment they would need to make their shakes.  I told them that we were going to make their shakes exactly to the written instructions.

The boy's found out quickly that they needed to be very specific in their instructions....we did laugh a lot when I tried to follow things like, "Get out a cup, plug it in" or "Shake peppermint, put milk in".

In the end we found that we had to make a few adjustments to our how to instructions.  In the end the boys were very happy with their shakes!

Little Cottage Writing Camp

This week I am teaching a writing camp for boys.  I have always been interested in how boys write, why most seem to hate writing, and how to get them hooked on writing.  Two books that I highly recommend to better understand the differences between boy writers and girl writers are Real Boys by William Pollack and Boy Writers by Ralph Fletcher. 
If you teach writing and think that there are no differences between boys and girls- you are sadly mistaken.  I have observed that girls tend to write about relationships and feelings while using a lot of dialogue.  Boys on the other hand write about action/doing and use a lot of descriptive words.  Boys also love to write about fighting, poop, farting, blood and just about any other body function/fluid you can think of.  One of the main points that stuck with me from Ralph Fletcher's book was that because most of us who teach writing are girls we tend to try and make our boys write more like girls.  That's like trying to get your cat to act more like a dog.  Not an easy task to undertake, and not beneficial to the cat in any way.
So this week is all about doing and then writing about it.  Monday we did some investigating into our origins of our name then wrote about it.  We studied rocks, wrote descriptives, then had to guess who had what rock based on that description.  Tuesday we visited the splash pad- a great combination of gross motor movement and water!  As the boys ran through the water features I asked (from the sidelines) ways that they could describe what they were experiencing, what the water reminded them of, what games they were playing/imagining and so on.  The result?  Writing.  Lots and lots of great writing.  They wrote about the dead bird we saw on the sidewalk, the splash pad, even the cookies my mom made for them to have as a snack.  It was a great success and the boys were excited to share their writing with each other.

Today we will be writing a how to piece.  We will be making milkshakes and then generating descriptive words to create writing that would explain what a milkshake tastes like to someone who had never had one along with the steps of how to make a milkshake.  Thursday will find us "fishing for stories".....yep, live worms and all : o ) 

Quadblogging in our Classroom

I am presenting at the Tots and Technology conference in Galveston on Monday and Tuesday.  My topic is quadblogging and digital diaries to raise the quality of writing in the classroom.  This is a topic that I am passionate about.  Teaching writing is my love, and I enjoy seeing kids engaged in their writing in a meaningful way.  One of the problems that I have seen with how we traditionally publish student's writing is that they are not really writing for an authentic audience.  Publishing to the outside-your-door-bulletin-board is not very exciting for a writer.  Publishing digitally and allowing children and other teachers from all over the world to read and comment on their writing is both exciting and fun!

I got involved with quadblogging in January of last year.  David Mitchell from England is the founder of quadblogging.  When I stumbled upon it last year I knew it was something I wanted to try, so I signed us up.  We were given a quadblog coordinator, Laura Gee, also from England.  We blogged with two schools in England and one in France.   My kids were excited to come in each day and visit the focus school for that week and get straight to working on their own writing and commenting on writing.  I gave lessons on netiquette and what makes a comment "thoughtful".  We worked on editing and peer editing during our blog time so that our comments would represent the best that 3rd grade could show.

The unexpected side effects of quadblogging and digitally publishing our writing was that my students wanted to write more and I found it was easy to incorporate other learning objectives along the way.   When we were learning about elapsed time our sidebar time widgets for England and France became the perfect vehicle for authentic teaching.  My students wanted to know where their friends in England were and what they were doing at various times during our day.  Teaching geography was a snap because of our flag counter.  The kids would see where visitors were coming from and then run to the large world map to determine how far away they were.  Mini-lessons on writing felt more purposeful in that my students were actually invested in their audience and motivated to improve their skills to make their stories more interested for their audience.

My outside the door bulletin board was empty most of the school year, but I didn't care-  It was evident on the web that my kids were true writers.

If you want to learn more about quadblogging go here.  To see our class digital diaries go here.   Any questions, just leave a comment and I will be happy to answer : O )