I was fascinated by Bill Farren’s “I’m Afraid Not”
and showed it to my high school Current Events students.

Their interpretation of the video was very different from mine.
http://tinyurl.com/568n5h

diane

dianes last blog post..She Never Existed Before: Mother’s Day 2008

a) I hear you about the importance of context and agree. I think I’ve said more than once in this thread that our contexts - age group of students, educational culture, socio-economic background, etc - are important to recognize, and that I suspect the high school students at my school are a different breed than that of most others here.

b) I hope to write about this, but the summary: I visited a class of 10-year-olds to read a story to them during literacy week - I read the last Winnie the Pooh story from the second of the two books - and their receptiveness and eagerness to hear blew me away. It confirmed what you say about middle years students. I was talking here about my normal context.

c) Re: the comment challenge, like all things, it depends on the individual participating. A lot of people are skeptical about it for a lot of reasons, and a lot aren’t. I think it’s a temperamental thing. When it works for all around, then it’s great. When not, there’s room for criticism.

That’s all I have time for now. Off to work.

I lied: Bill Farren’s blog is one of the most vital things out there. I’m glad you mention http://ed4wb.org . His latest video makes me wonder where he’ll be in a year. Amazing developments over there.

I’m a big fan of Bill Farren’s, and I think his blog is one of the few I commented on before the challenge.

My students are *required* to journal via a modified blog about their thoughts on the books they read for independent reading and to comment to each other’s blogs. They are also 10, 11 and 12 years old, and our blogs are limited to the 72 students in the grade, the teachers in the grade and our school librarian for legal reasons. I grade them in the sense that they have to do it, and if they don’t, I sit them down and they write under duress. I don’t like doing that, and I don’t have to do it often, but it has happened 2 or 3 times this year.

I’m not going to get far into how reading this post and series of comments has changed my mind, because I’m not done thinking it through yet. However, I am now engaged in being reflective and metacognative about my methods of getting students to read, write and communicate about reading. I really like what has happened this year with this activity, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just repeat it next year.

If you haven’t taught this age group, it’s an awful lot of fun, but it can be wild. Some are still at the point where they don’t bathe/brush their teeth except under duress. Others are in full-blown puberty by the end of the year. I think Clay’s points about selecting which students get the most attention apply to older students more than younger ones.

So–no nice synthesis here to wrap it up; however, I’m going to do some more thinking about whether coerced writing can be authentic. Yep, I’m tagging this post too.