All the students in Grade 4 are very excited to have their own blogs and be able to make comments on each others' posts. And since they are beginning a blogging project with three other schools, they will soon get plenty of practice.
The teacher and I collaborated on the best way to introduce comments and starting online discussions. She followed the guidelines Taipei American School uses for their elementary school:
- Make a compliment
- Add new information
- End with a question
- Proofread your comment
For older students, one might use these guidelines via Eduro Learning:
The comment:
- shows insight, depth, and evaluation.
- is connected with the original post and subsequent comments.
- is relevant with links to supporting material.
- shows personal opinion expressed in an appropriate style and is clearly related to the thread or post.
- shows a level of evaluation and considers in some depth the outcomes, impacts or effects of the post or comments.
The lesson went as follows:
- She first spoke with her students about what makes a good comment. (See the comment framework below)
- She let the students make comments on each others' posts.
- The students were then brought together to look at a few comments that were made and worked together to think of how to make the comments better.
We also looked at the comment settings and made sure the settings to make sure students would be emailed whenever they received a comment.
This setting can be found in Dashboard > Settings > Discussion > Email me whenever > [check] anyone posts a comment
If students do receive an inappropriate comment they should alert a teacher right away.
It is great that students will be able to authentically practice what they are learning with a real audience.
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