Creating Class Blog with Student Voice

Written By Amy Bowker

This year my goal is to have student voice and choice be the most important thing in my classroom. We started this by creating our class name. We brainstormed for longer than I had expected, a week and a half. I was waiting for a name so I could create a classroom blog and twitter account. We came up with some great names: Tech Titans, World Skypers, The Skypers Crew. We ended up voting and the winner was Tech Titans.

You can check out our blog (a work in progress) here, and follow us on twitter @techtitans4. We are still working on a logo for our twitter page so check on that later.

I decided instead of me going ahead and creating a blog, I would leave it blank and get students to see some examples of what class blogs can look like.

I created a Google Doc with classroom blogs that I find inspiring and shared it with my students.

Blogs to Check out:

Grade 1: http://.edublogs.org/

Grade 1/ 2: http://www.mslimscassidysclassrenmansroom.blogspot.ca/

Grade 1/ 2: https://mrsbowkersclass.edublogs.org/

Grade 3 /  4:http://epcotclass.blogspot.ca/

Grade 4/5: http://www.awesomegeniuses.blogspot.ca/

Grade 7:www.mrsripp.com

I gave each table a blog to check out first and then when they were done, they could move onto any blog they were interested in. I introduced Google Docs to my students and got them to make a list about what they want our blog to look like.

Here is our list:

  • Tweet Attachment thingy

  • pictures of field trips we had

  • Contact Us button

  • Comment Section

  • Calendar of special events

  • Timeline

  • Book Reports

  • Share the sites we use to learn.

  • add a background to make it look yum yum

  • Custom Font

  • Challenges for other classes

  • Filter to make us Fab!

  • A follow us button

  • Subscribe Button

  • Mascot

  • Events that people will want to see. not boring!

  • Presentations

  • Giveaways.

  • Contests/challenges

  • Artwork.

  • Plays.

  • secret missions

  • birthday parties

  • math models

  • science experiments

  • PJ day

  • track and field

  • tournaments/tryouts

  • videos of things we did in class

  • good information

  • different people can write about it

  • making robots and castles and then take a pic

  • explain what we did in the day

  • put our goals put labels of what we did

  • Questions!!

  • put good pictures of our work

  • write about people who visited our class

  • fun background on the blog

  • Everybody can write their own post ones at a time,like whats happening at school,what is their feeling today are they happy for example, whats their comments about todays experiment on Science.Taking pictures from important events.

  • you have to finish your work on time. you have to be polite. you have to know what you’re writing.  

A great list for our first look at classroom blogs. I’m so excited to work with these students this year!ice

Amy Bowker
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