Blogging is very much in the news and for all the right reasons!
It is no secret that teachers internationally struggle to get 100% motivation from children to engage fully in writing. Boy’s especially struggle with putting pen to paper, and whilst it is really important that we still teach children to physically form letters and write with pen and paper, we have to find another way of engaging children with writing.
We live in the most intensely stimulating time that the world has ever known. For children it must be bewlidering. DS’s, Wii’s, HD TV, Playstations, X Box, the Internet and many more high intensity stimulus demand the children’s attention.
I believe that as education professionals, we need to engage with this technology and make it work for us. Blogging is just one way of doing this. It is effectively writing on the internet. Historically the children wrote for teachers, now blogging allows the children to receive comments on their work from around the world. NOW there is a real reason for spending a lot of time and effort on their writing because lots of people value it and not just their teacher and parents.
There are obviously key rules about not specifying where they live or what they’ll be doing this evening at what time but this is healthy E safety work which all children will need when as they grow up and which is provided in school. This gives a practical reason for doing E Safety work.
You may have seen Heathfield Primary School from Bolton on BBC news this morning. They have seen Level 5′s in writing jump from 9% to 63% in a very multi ethnic area where English is often a second language. Their blogs can be found linked to our homepage to the right and there is an article here from the Independent about their work. http://ind.pn/ikpCck
Hawes Side and Ferry Lane are two other schools that have embarked upon this work and I will add others to our Blogroll so that you can see the quality of what is being done.
