Plans for my classroom blogs

I teach 7th - 9th grade math to lower-end math students. Approximately 50% of my students receive either special education or Title 1 services. I have been working to come up with effective classroom practices for improving the language skills of my students whose greatest difficulties in math appear to be language-related. Eventually I would love to use classroom blogs to help my students improve their language skills through writing and collaboration with others. It was interesting and exciting for me to read about the power of blogging for developing language skills in Will Richardson's "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" (2009). He believes that blogs facilitate "a new form of genre that could be called 'connective writing,' a form that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, that demands clarity and cogency in its construction, that is done for a wide audience, and that links to the sources of the ideas expressed" (p. 28).

In a previous course in my master's program in at Walden University, I discovered a report written by Montague, Krawec, and Sweeney (2008) in which research determined that a student’s poor vocabulary and inability to describe how math problems are solved has a direct negative effect on his or her math learning skills and test performance. This reinforces my belief that improved reading and language skills would enhance students’ math learning. Again, blogging as a tool for such learners sounds very promising.

In my classroom blogs, I've thought about trying simple things such as exchanging word problems with students in other schools in sort of a challenge-to-others format where responses and solutions would be given in written language (sentence and paragraph) form as opposed to using numerals and math symbols.

Another idea I've considered is posting problems and requiring my students to use blog posts or comments to describe the steps they used for solving the problems. They could take the process a step further and write comments to critique the work or problem-solving descriptions of other students.

I've also considered having them use blogs as journals to describe their feelings/frustrations/successes in math class. I will occasionally use part of a class period to have an open discussion with my students about these things, but I think for them to put their thoughts in writing would be even more effective.

Aside from the ideas I have mentioned, I will be creating an informational blog for parents and students to highlight the things that will be going on throughout the year in my classroom. I have yet to decide whether I will create one blog for all of my classes or one for each class...one for each class sounds like more work than may be necessary. I have yet to work out the details, but I have several ideas floating around in my head for what I will include on the blog(s). I'd like for it to be a newsletter type of blog for the purpose of keeping people informed.

References

Montague, M., Krawec, J., and Sweeney, C. (2008, Spring.) Promoting self-talk to improve middle school students’ mathematical problem solving. Perspectives on Language and Literacy, 34(2) 13 – 17. Retrieved April 2, 2009, from ProQuest Central database. (Document ID: 1480985781). http://proquest.umi.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/pqdweb?index=30&did=1480985781&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1238948347&clientId=70192

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.