I am so excited to incorporate writing in my math class during the new semester. My goal is to have students use blogging as an instructional tool to write and express their mathematical ideas. I hope to provide them with an opportunity to reflect on their understanding of mathematics.
Blogging and technology are two tools that go hand-hand. Blogging makes integrating technology in the classroom easy. I researched and wanted to find the easiest blogging site for me to use with my students.
I found Kid Blogs.
Kids Blogs provided me with the opportunity to create one room and add each student to the room. To easily access student’s account as needed, I created the username and password for each student. There was no downloading or checking your email to activate the account. It was a perfect solution for my goal.
Now that I had the site, I needed to decide how I would effectively use blogging in my class. Blogs can be used as a classroom blog where I post assignments, classroom updates, and more. I could also use blogs as digital journals, exit slips, or a digital portfolio. Since my goal was to integrate writing to express mathematical ideas, I decided to use our blog as a digital journal.
Students will be required to write a blog entry on topics, questions, and problems assigned by me. They will be required to share their understanding of a topic, provide a response to a question, or solution to a problem. To allow students to reflect on their understanding and learning, topics, questions, and problems will be assigned to each student at the end of each class. Students will post their blog entry at the beginning of the next class meeting. To reflect on their peers understanding and learning, each student will be required to effectively respond to at least 2 of their peer posts.Since blogs are stamped with the date and time, I can easily assess students understanding and provide feedback.
Using blogging as a digital journal, students will be able to reflect on their overall progress in the understanding and communicating of mathematics. Student’s use of blogging will provide them with the opportunity to improve their writing and reading comprehension skills. Most importantly blogging will allow me to promote a positive engaging learning environment for my students.
My students have already experienced microblogging through Twitter and Today’s Meet, so this should be a great experience for them. We will still microblog for our warm-ups, exit slips, and collaboration.
Visit me at Fun Integrating Technology for ideas, rubrics from Mr. Kerlin’s Math World, projects, and writing prompts.
What age level are you trying this with?
I have started to do blogging in my math classes as well with Kidblog as well. My middle school PLC has focused on how to incorporate reading and writing across the disciplines. We have used the RAFT post-reading strategy which is a writing strategy. I had the kids post their RAFTs in their blogs. It was a great way for them to read each others ideas.
I will look more at your writings on your blogging journey. I have not yet blogged myself about my experience with doing this buthave been inspired by you to do that now. Thanks!
Do you have a tool that will allow students to input math text into their blog or will they have to write out all of their notation. This is the one setback I am having with switching to blogger or kid blogs, most students in high school can’t work microsoft word to make their papers have math notation in their papers. Do you have a way of getting around this?
I have been using kidblog with my 2nd graders. I post a problem of the day and they respond with their solution and description of their thinking not just the answer. This gives me a quick assessment and the opportunity to respond personally to their work. Some of my more advanced students are starting to post problems of their own for their classmates to solve. I’ve even had some take pictures of their thoughts (using educreations) and posting them. Kidblog is an awesome tool for the classroom.
Kim, I have 9th grade students.
Thanks Gretchen. I will keep you posted on our journey.
Trever, to show math text, students will use their photo tool to write the problem and photo it or use their video recording tool. I have a class set of iPads, so it is easy for me to use these tools.
This is a great idea for math with Common Core Standards on the horizon. Do your students blog on class or computer lab computers during school time? I live in an area where the majority of my students do not have internet access at home except maybe on a parent’s phone which is generally not able to be used for assignments. Also, how well does this work for 7th and 8th graders?
Great article,
We’d love to help support this, is there anything in particular that would make this type of activity easier? We have a dedicated chat tool for educational use and are always looking for ways to make it better for teachers and students.
I started trying to get my students, yr 7, to write about, or at least ask questions, about their learning, in our Edmodo group last year. With limited success to be honest, but I haven’t given up and I will try again with this year’s class. I’m going to investigate kid blogs. We also have iPads, so while Latex code can be used for Maths text, this is too hard and time consuming for kids (and me some days) screen shots is a better idea.