We Hosted a Blog Commenting Party

This past Wednesday from 3:30-6:00 after school, my students and I held a Blog Commenting Party. What is that you might ask? Well let me explain what it is and how it came about.

Last year for the first time I had my fourth graders blogging using kidblog.org. This is something I have wanted to do for a couple of years and finally felt I had found the right platform for us to use since the students don't need email addresses and everything is moderated through a teacher dashboard.

Since I teach math and social studies, not English, I had to find a way to use blogging with my students. I decided they would use their blogs as reflective learning journals. I wanted them to post about once a week, telling about something they learned in our classes. I don't grade their posts, but we set up blogging guidelines. It was agreed upon that proper English would be used when they posted. Yes, I do make small corrections to their spelling and punctuation before I make their posts "live", but it was understood that I would send back posts that didn't make sense or didn't contain enough information for the reader to understand what they were talking about.

I learned about using the hashtag #comments4kids to generate over 1,800 comments for my students' blogs last year. And while that was very exciting, I was disappointed that the parents were not commenting on their kids' blogs. As I reflected on the year of blogging over the summer I decided to try and get more parents involved this year.

That is when the Blog Commenting Party idea was hatched. I realized that maybe the parents didn't really know how to comment. So I decided to work on fixing that this year.

This year we began blogging during the first week of school by doing a paper blogging activity. My students are writing about their passions as well as using their blogs as reflective learning journals. My students and I learned how to leave a quality comment by viewing a video from Linda Yollis. She had her third graders make an excellent video that teaches others how to comment. My students created our own version of her video to share with our parents. I put together a flyer to send home to the parents inviting them to our party. We asked everyone who came to bring a snack or something to drink.

I was excited that 12 parents came and so did our principal, Brenda Breithaupt. In fact she was our official photographer. (Thank you, Brenda.)

First we showed them our video. Then I explained the safety features of the kidblog.org platform. The parents were visibly relieved when I told them that I moderate everything - posts and comments have to be approved by me before they appear on our blogs. I also showed them TweeetDeck on our interactive white board and explained the #comments4kids column. Next, we showed them our paper blogs that were on the bulletin board and I explained the lesson I taught to introduce blogging to my students. Then I shared my classroom blog with them and showed them the posts and comments I have gotten since school started. Finally the kids got out the netbooks and shared their blogs with their parents. You can view our blogs here and here.

As I circulated around the room, I loved the comments I was hearing.
"Son, I didn't know you knew how to do this."
"Wow, you know how to add a picture to your post!"
"I didn't know you remembered that. You were so little when that happened."
"You're going to have to show me how to do this. Maybe I'll start a blog."

There was so much pride flowing from both the parents and the students. My heart was singing. The parents read the posts and the kids showed them how to add comments.

I was supposed to Skype in our best commenter, JoAnn Jacobs from Hawaii. JoAnn leaves such great comments on all of our blogs and we wanted to personally thank her, but I totally messed up that one. We didn't connect with her because I got confused with the time zones. I did Skype with Jodi Judd in California for a few minutes to show the parents how a Skype call works.

As the party was winding down, I had several conversations with different parents about how much I love learning about my students' passions by reading their blogs. Several parents said they had learned something new about their child by reading their blogs too.

Needless to say, I left school that day like I was walking on a cloud. Our Blog Commenting Party had been a great success. How do you encourage parents to comment on your students' blogs? What else do you think I should add to the list of activities for our next party?