This term I have felt more satisfied with my students blogs. There has been more involvement with the whole concept of blogging, driven especially by three students who have put up photos and audio files on to their blogs. Admire
Sabrina's photos and paintings and enjoy
Shawn's and
Cathy's taste in music.
These captured the interest of the rest of the class. The amount of writing that students has done has also been more than last term. This may well reflect a more mature attitude in general towards their learning. A number of students have written on their own topics, although they still say they like me to set a topic.
As well, my focus on communication has paid off. Students have commented freely on each other's work (time given for this in the lab helps!) Posting questions on the class blog and teaching them how to comment has been of value.
The class blog I largely used to give them writing tasks as homework each weekend (our lab time was on Friday morning each week). Each task I modelled on
my own blog. I also posted sample sentences/paragraphs using the vocab list for that week. It was nice having the opportunity to revisit words in this way, and I worked hard at giving students useful chunks of vocab - this related to what we were doing in class with more of a lexical focus.
For me, one of the things I have enjoyed this term is the students actually teaching me to do things on the blog. Also the comments they have made and the authentic interaction created in this way. Their evident enthusiasm for blogging - and their request for 'more time please in the lab' has been encouraging. They seem (in questionnaire and interview) quite convinced that blogging has helped their language learning.
