Guest Blog: Blogging and Comprehension

Lindsey Wright is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.

I’m sharing Lindsey’s post with you in the hope it will motivate you to consider blogging with your students—if you haven’t already started.

Blogging and Comprehension by Lindsey Wright

While it's customary for students to write research papers or complete other one-off writing assignments everywhere from online college classes to traditional grade schools, many teachers at all levels are begining to discover that incorporating blogs into the curriculm provides for much more effective teaching. The main reason for this is that blogging is by nature dynamic, always growing and changing while providing fresh web content on a regular basis. As such, using blogs in the classroom allows students to tap into this continual flow of words to improve their own writing, gain critical technology-based skills, and aid in overall comprehension of school subjects.

Ultimately blogs provide an active forum for learning that can be utilized even in the early elementary classroom to engage students and improve interaction. Having to present ideas to their peers in a clear, concise manner on a regular basis requires students to expand their knowledge of class subjects and aids in overall comprehension. Likewise, the critical thinking skills acquired through blogging can be applied to other areas of life, including higher education and, eventually, the workplace.

Blogging as a Learning Tool

Blogs offer many powerful tools for teachers who are looking to integrate technology in the classroom. Serious bloggers create new posts several days a week, making blogging the ultimate writing project. It’s been well established that writing on a regular basis is the best way to practice and become a better writer overall. Blogs provide a focus for this type of practice and can be used to engage students in the act of writing far more often than large projects like research papers allow. This is as true for young students learning basic writing skills as it is for middle and high schoolers developing more advanced literary ability.

Integrating the active nature of blogging into the classroom can be done in several ways, each with its own advantages. Students may have their own individual blogs, or teachers can start a collaborative classroom blog to bring a class together on a particular project. The key is making use of the unique learning opportunities offered by blogs.

Student Blogs

Journaling has been a typical classroom activity for many years. As technology advances, individual student blogs become the next logical step. Blogs offer a sense of community not found with paper journals. When journaling for class, students know that the teacher is the only person who is going to be reading their work. However, with blogs, students can read each other’s posts, thereby creating a network of classmates who also have the opportunity to respond to the writing of their peers. This encourages students to really think about what they’re writing and put effort into presenting ideas in a clear, comprehensible manner.

Through continued use, a blog can improve student articulation and critical thinking skills. How does this translate to comprehension? Writing blog posts involves careful consideration of content. A good blogger doesn’t simply cobble a post together, throw in a few links and call it done. On the contrary, blogging involves the same critical thought as traditional classroom writing projects. Students who blog have to take the time to consider what they’re writing about and work out how to best present their opinions and ideas. In order to do this with clarity, students have to develop a solid grasp of the subject on which they’re writing.

Collaborative Blogs

Teachers can also create a collaborative or community blog for their students. The most important difference between this and individual student blogging is the ability of the teacher or instructor to easily moderate posts and comments. Most blogging platforms allow for the creation of a main or administrator account that can control the overall flow of activity on a blog. With this option, teachers set parameters so that they can review each piece of content before it appears on the blog, thus eliminating the possibility of inappropriate material going live. Moderation makes it possible to use collaborative blogging even with young children.

An instructor-moderated blog in which the entire class can participate opens the door to endless possibilities. Teachers can post writing prompts or discussion questions and have students respond in the comments section, thus creating an open forum for discussion. This free flow of ideas requires the same sort of careful thought that students should be applying to everyday classroom discussions. However, having to articulate their answers through writing encourages students to slow down and consider the words they’re using. A comprehensive knowledge of the subject at hand is also required to facilitate interaction and promote the academic sharing of ideas.

Since it’s possible to post a blog comment from anywhere, community blog activity isn’t restricted to the block of time reserved for a subject during the school day. When at home both students and teachers participating in a blog can take the time to write thorough, thoughtful posts and comments as well as respond to each other in ways that aren’t possible during class. This further aids comprehension in that teachers can provide more in-depth information for students to read on their own time, along with links for further reading.

Blogs vs. Research Papers

The thought of a traditional research paper makes most students groan in anticipation of long hours spent at the library, mountains of notes, and the final frantic scramble to bring everything together. While traditional research is still very important for students to practice, teachers should consider the benefits that blogging has over bigger writing projects.

The fact that a blog post isn’t as long as a whole paper is a plus. Rather than having to wade through page after page of information, both students and teachers can break a subject down into manageable chunks. Students get the luxury of using the Internet to do research on their own time, and teachers are spared having to read and correct sheaves of lengthy reports. It’s also much easier for teachers to check the sources used by students in blog posts, given that links are included right with the writing rather than being listed in the ubiquitous bibliography pages at the end of a traditional paper.

Additionally, knowing that the teacher is going to be checking their work this closely should motivate students to find quality information and put together thoughtful blog posts. Student blog posts have the potential to be more comprehensive and original than a paper comprised mostly of information regurgitated from sources that the teacher may never see.

A Highly Recommended Book on Reading Comprehension

Just a brief post to recommend a professional book that I think every elementary-grade teacher should own. It’s called Teaching Reading Comprehension to Students with Learning Difficulties by Janette K. Klingner, Sharon Vaughn, and Alison Boardman. This short volume offers clear, practical, and research-based practices to improve students’ comprehension. And in this age of high teacher accountability and standards, this may be just what we need to keep ourselves grounded and feeling confident that we are doing the very best for our students. It’s one that I keep at the very top of my pile.

"Retelling as Written Response" Ideas

[This post is based on a question Lisa posed in the June 25th comment box.]

Dear Lisa,

I think you’re “right on” when you have your ELL first graders talk about the book you’ve read aloud before asking them to respond in writing. The types of guided responses you've asked them to make and the prompts you've provide seem varied and developmentally appropriate. And I totally get how this is so much more difficult when they attempt them on their own. This is always the case and, as you well know, their skill develops over time. So we need to be patient.

Let’s focus for a moment on the “retelling” part of your question. You’ve expressed concern that asking kids to retell stories would be tedious and boring. It may be, but the extend to which it actually is depends on how often we ask them to retell and the types of retelling we engage them in. Two things need to come into play: First, we need to balance written responses with oral responses such as readers theater, book talks, etc. and visual representations such as making pictures, character maps, etc. Second, we need to expand the scaffolds we provide for students as they retell. 

You mention Beginning-Middle-End (B-M-E) as one scaffold. In The Next Step in Guided Reading, Jan Richardson offers two others that work with early readers such as yours. They are Somebody-Wanted-But-So (S-W-B-S) and the Five-Finger Retell.

Here’s how Richardson describes S-W-B-S:

“The students write a one-sentence summary using the S-W-B-S scaffold. At first you will need to help students write this response, but eventually you should be able to say, Write a ‘Somebody-Wanted-But-So’ for this story.

Somebody: Who is the story about?

Wanted: What did this character want?

But: But what happened?

So: How did it end? What happened next?

The response should be written in a complete sentence. As students write independently, you should circulate among the group and scaffold students who need your help.”

In addition Richardson discusses the Five-Finger Retell where each finger represents one aspect of story grammar.

Thumb: The characters are…

1^st finger: The setting is…

Tall finger: The problem is…

Ring finger: The events are… (What happened first? Next? Then?)

Little finger: At the end…

Since your students are young and ELL, this is a scaffold you would introduce and initially use in whole-class settings. However as the students get the hang of it you might ask them to write about “one finger” with enough detail (and perhaps a picture) to show they understand how it works with the story as a whole. And of course, they will need multiple demonstrations of what you mean.

I close with this reminder. While responses to text—written and otherwise—are important and should be something kids do during their independent reading time of day, we need to remember that providing voluminous opportunities for them to read just-right books is still our number one priority. Kids can’t improve their reading if they don’t read.

Daniel Willingham Podcast-Background Knowledge and Reading Strategies

I was going through some files preparing for an institute I'm doing this week in ohio and came across a link to a podcast given to me by a soul-mate teacher in Portland, Oregon. Well...I finally listened to all 15-minutes of it and am so glad I did! It's Daniel Willingham talking about background knowledge—how important background knowledge is and how comprehension strategy instruction is being over-done. Now that you have a bit more time—assuming you've already begun your well-deserved summer break—take your laptop on your deck, grab a cool drink, and listen... Bet it will start you thinking about next year.

Juggling Time for Reading and Response

In a May 30^th comment box Mary raised the issue of there being a fine line between asking kids to respond in a thoughtful manner to texts they read and one that doesn’t take too much time away from their independent reading. She writes that her children often get caught up filling in their response sheets when perhaps time would be better spent reading.

I understand her dilemma and I have experienced it often myself. And admittedly if I went back to classroom teaching tomorrow I’d have to seriously reconsider the amount and type of response I ask students to make. Especially in light of the Carnegie Corporation’s 2010 Writing to Read Report that recommends, based on a meta-analysis of reading and writing research, that teachers have students write about texts they read to improve to improve their reading. The report states on page 5 that “students’ comprehension of science, social studies, and language arts is improved when they write about what they read, specifically when they:

•  respond to a text in writing (writing personal reactions, analyzing and interpreting the text)

•  write summaries of text

•  write notes about a text

•  answer questions about a text in writing, or create or answer written questions about a text.

So you see, not only would I need to consider how much kids should respond during the reading workshop but also how to get them to write more throughout the content-area times of day. How often and the types of responses I might ask them to make would, of course, depend on children's age and stage of reading development, but would certainly include more…more drawing, more writing, more quick writes, more writing about what they are learning. If studies cited in the Carnegie Report link writing to children's reading development then I’d be remise not to consider how this might play out in my own classroom. And unfortunately I’d still be left with the dilemma of how increase the amount of responding children to without taking precious time away from their reading. No quick fix here…just the challenge of figuring out a personal solution to this ever-so-important juggling dilemma. (Thanks Mary, for raising the issue.)

Branching Out—Our Nonfiction Collection Needs to Address More Than “Animals”

My interest in informational texts and the importance of bringing them into classrooms and children’s hands has made me rethink a whole lot of things. In fact when I went into my basement to check out the nonfiction books I own, I was alarmed to find that so many are about animals. And when you consider all there is about the world for children to learn, it would seem that the books in our private and classroom collection should include titles for a wide variety of nonfiction subtopics—weather, transportation, astronomy, biology, history, etc.—you get the picture.

I’m happy to say that I’ve recently added three new titles to my nonfiction collection:

 

The Digestive System: What Makes Me Burp? by Sue Barraclough is an fine example of an expository text written with primary-grade students in mind. Each chapter title is written as a question, which prompts kids to find the answer as they read. In addition, it’s jam packed with gorgeous photographs and text features to held kids access and recall information, e.g. table of contents, labels, captions, close-ups, index, glossary. There are other books in this “Body Systems” series: The Circulatory System, The Respiratory System, The Sensory System, and The Skeletal and Muscular Systems.

A Is for Astronaut: Exploring Space from A to Z by Traci N. Todd and Sara Gillingham is, you guessed it, an alphabet book about space. Instead of lengthy paragraphs for each letter, there are several key words for each letter and a simple phrase to describe each word. For example, the word “cockpit” on the “C” page says that it is “the part of a spacecraft where the pilot sits.” The illustrations (a combination of gorgeous photos and vintage illustrations) are sure to pique children’s interest and the information is easily assessable to primary-grade readers.

 

The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life with the Chimps by Jeannette Winter a beautifully written biography about this world-renowned animal researcher and activist. In addition to learning about Jane Goodall’s life-long passion for learning about these primates (which seemed to begin with a toy chimpanzee given to her by her father), children also learn how important it is to “observe” what’s around them and follow their passion.

I’m excited about these books. What’s more…these three titles span three distinct nonfiction subgenres: expository text (digestive system), sequential texts (space from A to Z), and biography (Jane Goodall). We need to branch out on so many levels.

A Noteworthy Informational Text Strategy Book

Let me tell you about a really cool book I found when preparing for some content area professional development I’ll be doing next week. It’s Barbara Moss and Virginia S. Loh’s 35 Strategies for Guiding Readers though Informational Texts. It’s a newly revised and expanded edition of Moss’s 25 Strategies for Guiding Readers…

I love the way the book’s organized. Lessons are chunked together under the following categories: Getting Started Strategies, Building Background Strategies, Vocabulary Strategies, Comprehension Strategies, and Writing Strategies—although I must say that to me they’re ALL about comprehension. The strategies in this K-12 resource are accessible and applicable to children in kindergarten through grade 5.