Practicing Writing is not Polished & Perfect Writing

Early on in our research project we made the decision that we would not use this learning time for blogging be one in which student writing was corrected and rewritten for a perfect product to display on the web. Had we done that we would not have gotten much blogging done. We only had one morning each week in this class to blog so we chose to make the focus on helping these bloggers communicate their ideas to their readers. Mistakes were discussed and mini-lessons were provided to help students learn to correct their own errors but we chose not to spend time going back to rewrite everything so the final piece would be perfect. We made the process paramount not the product, for these elementary students. This is a place for students to practice blogging (writing) so that they could take risks and experiment with making writing come alive for their readers. We provided relevant feedback and observed students come to new understandings of writing and its purpose in their learning. Carefully scaffolded instruction through blogging can provide such an environment for young bloggers to practice their writing.