Jam Lesson: blog entries
My Jam Lesson
Senior students / Year 12th
Writing activity: blog entries
A Little bit of context:
This is a lesson I did with my senior students last year right after Winter Holidays in the southern hemisphere (August). Before the two-week recess period, we had been working on how to write blogs as part of their IB Diploma program. They had found it extremely difficult to think about what to write in a personal blog. So I decided I was going to ask them something personal about their own Winter break and then ask them to write their blog on that.
So this is how this lesson came to be.
So the first thing I did was to ask them to open menti.com and write three words they could think of to describe their recess period in this so very weird Covid-19 context
So they started writing their words as part of their individual thinking.
I used their own words to share their stories. I asked them: what made you choose this word or that one? A very interesting conversation indeed which allowed me to know them better. It made their emotional climate visible to me.
So then I decided to go on using the Thinking Routine: Think (already done) – pair – share
So they all went to their break out rooms to work in trios and they shared the words they had chosen and they explained what had made them choose those words. They also had to see if there were any similarities in their choices and why. They had 10’ in the breakout rooms before coming back to main session. We shared what they had discussed in their rooms.
http://www.theteachertoolkit.com/index.php/tool/think-pair-share
So now I felt they were ready to attempt writing a personal blog entry.
They could choose their own words or use any other from their mates. They had to write their blog entry on a padlet. They were warned to give a catchy title to their pieces. (some did not take this piece of advice)
If you want to take a look at what some of them wrote go to https://padlet.com/maria_barberis/mdjk6sg7ihycw88l
All in all, this was a great way to make their feelings and emotions visible and to boost their writing skills.
María Barberis
