The blogging experience is one of the backbones of the course syllabus in levels 3 (pre-intermediate) and 4 (intermediate). Blogs have been used to train and develop our students' writing and communicative skills. There will be TEN 90-minute sessions this term. On each session, your students have to write about different themes connected to their personal, social and academic contexts. Each post (a piece of text that you or a student uploads to the blog) has a set of specific instructions to be followed.
Important Things:
1. You (the teacher) need to create your own blog which will become the guiding blog for your students. They will access it to get the general instructions and your post sample for each session. At the same time, from your blog you can have immediate access (through links) to all your students' blogs. Make sure that ALL your students always leave a comment on each of your post samples.
2. Each student has to create their own blog. On it, s/he will publish their different posts (10). Through their blogs, they will also get in touch with you and classmates (leaving at least 2 comments per post) -- Make sure that ALLthe students get linked up to each other and to you in the very first session.
3. Blog Session Structure >>
Each blog session should have these 3 components:
1) Intro (15') > You introduce the post theme here. To do it, you can have a brief group discussion about the post theme, and you can make them read and discuss your sample post. The purpose is to give them a few ideas that can act as a triggering/starting point for their own posts.
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2) Post Writing (60') > Here the students have to write their posts. Moving around the class to assist them with language doubts is the your main activity here.
3) Comments (15') > Now it's time for them to read and leave comments on your blog and on 2 (or 3) of their partners' posts.
4. Blog Assessment > There is a specific assessment framework for blogs with 2 basic forms of evaluation:
1)Simple form: Done / Not done (10 posts)
2)With Writing Rubric (only 2 posts)
The full assessment document is available here. (see post called: Marking Rubric)
5. Blog Syllabus (available)
6. Posts Instructions (published here / each one on a different post)>> Please, publish the posts instructions ONE AT A TIME, just a few days before each session. As mentioned above, don't forget to write your own sample post for each session.
7. Free or Themed Posts > There are 3 or 4 themed posts each term. As a group, the students can negotiate and choose the topic of these posts - within certain limits which will be stated on the specific post instructions.
