Blogging with Elementary Students

I am starting a project with one 5th Grade class.  They studying colonial times, so they are going to take the role of a colonist, and keep a blog about what is happening in their daily lives.  I'm trying to see if we can design specific questions to ask in our comments section that will prompt the colonist/bloggers to provide more information.

I'm thinking of designing a new blog just for this project, and have the students choose new colonist names.

When our projects are posted, I will invite anyone to read and reply!

I work on a planning team with our Teacher Librarian, Music, PE, and Art teachers.  Our building goal this year is writing, and we were asked to devise a plan for supporting writing through integration of all our disciplines.  Blogs are going to be it.  Each of our 5th Grade classes has a blog "community" where students have their own blogging spaces.  I've added all the teachers as users, and they will post and comment to students about topics in Art, Music, and PE.  They will use the blogs as an assessment tool.  The Teacher Librarian and I will be monitoring the blogs, noting students' writing skills, and integrating instruction to support the writing process.

I'm very excited to have the group on board, and to see the kind of success we have with it.