Monday, October 6, 2014

Student Blogs with Pfeffer's "Dead and Gone"

Student Blogs



So during the first 40 minutes of each day, all students in our school attend an academic achievement period for either remediation for acceleration based on their quarter grades and the previous year's standardized test scores. This is the first year I've taught acceleration instead of remediation, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I've always stuck to a solid routine of reading comprehension lessons mixed with a couple of work days for students to get help on outside writing and reading assignments (I get students from the entire grade level, not just my team). However, having never planned for an acceleration group, I was a bit stumped. Since we just adopted new textbooks this year, I had the pleasure of ordering new novels and was excited to order the sequel to Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It, Dead and Gone. 

What I really liked about Pfeffer's first two books in this series is that they are both independent but content related. They can be read independently or one right after another. At first I debated about having students split into two groups and half read Life As We Knew It and the other half read Dead and Gone. However, since I didn't have quite as much time as I would have liked, I decided to have everyone read the same novel, and when we rotated in 4 1/2 weeks, I would try out both novels at the same time.

Students were required to complete in class reading and/or check the book out and take it home. Quite a few of my students chose this option once they got about 20 pages into the novel. It's quite a difficult read to put down. When we had discussions in class, students often commented about how they just couldn't imagine what it would be like to have lived through a similar situation. With an emphasis in writing this year, I wanted to come up with something more than just write an essay or a reflection. I wanted something my students could tap into creatively or for those that loved science.

While googling, I came across Dr. Susan Louise Stewart's college syllabus for an Adolescent Literature course at Texas A&M that included a blog activity for this book. Being a typical teacher and habitual idea thief, I immediately jumped on the idea she presented. I gave my students the option of creating a blog in which they wrote as if they were experiencing the similar events as mentioned in the novel, or they could decide to take a research perspective and discuss possibilities of what it might be like should our moon disappear altogether, move further away, or, as in the story, move significantly closer to Earth.

EVEN MY NON-READERS GOT INTO THIS ASSIGNMENT!!!!

My students ended up using SimpleSite.com due to some last minute technical snafus the IT department was working out with the internet filters. My first choices out of shear user friendliness would have been Blogger.com or Weebly.com. However, SimpleSite.com worked just as well, and students were able to navigate it quite easily.

I really gave students free reign to design their websites in whatever way they felt most connected with what they wanted to say in their blogs. I was amazed at the time and attention students paid to the backgrounds of their webpages, the graphics they included, as well as the details of their actual posts. Once we are completely finished on Thursday, I will post links to some of the student blogs to give you an idea of what they were able to accomplish in about 4 class periods of computer time.

All in all, students read for 2 1/2 weeks and spend 4ish class periods blogging. While I would love to have more time, we rotate AAP classes every 4 1/2 weeks, so I'll get my next batch of kiddos in on Friday.

Until then, happy blogging :)



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