After reading the article my mind has been changed. I am interning in a fourth grade classroom. I am in the inclusion special education classroom. I have students to who range from ED to LD to Autistic. I enjoyed the part in the article about having the students blog to share their feelings about their days. The article says, "Blogging can be used to help overcome the loneliness and seclusion these students often feel in classroom settings." I hope my students don't feel this way in the classroom, because we include them in everything we do. I do know my student who has ED would greatly improve if she was able to blog about her day. Having her put pencil to paper is like pulling teeth, she hates her hand writing because it looks like a first graders. She tries everything she can to get out of writing, but I know she can do it. She has wonderful things to say about everything she does during the day.
I have found a classroom blogging website and a blogging program for schools. The program costs 30 dollars a year and you can have as many students activated as you want. It creates a safe environment for students to blog with fellow students in the classroom. The blogging program also always you to share blogs with another class. This would be great for the new day pen pals! Students from different classes in different locations would be able to blog together and share there thoughts about topics. This would be great for the students to see how other students in different areas view things. The blogging program is called Class Press.
I would love to have this in my classroom when I begin teaching next fall.
Veronica, like you, before I read the the Penrod article, I was hesitant about the idea of allowing students to blog as part of our classroom literacy program. But, after reading the article, I agree that it can be very beneficial for our students who have special needs. I have students with processing delays in my class. They can compose amazing, beautiful thoughts, but have extreme difficulties getting those ideas on papers. I think blogs can be a great tool for these students to communicate these thoughts. I love the idea of Class Press and will certainly look into it. I am wondering though, can parents also look at these blogs on this site? What are your thoughts about parents reading these student created blogs? Is this something you would promote or limit?
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