Today marks the 10th anniversary for “I Love to Write Day.” My 5th grade students really do love to write. In fact, they are voracious writers. They can’t seem to get enough writing.

Through the years, I can’t say that my students have always said that. In fact, there was a time when I felt like I was pulling them through each and every writing project while they stubbornly dug their heels in and fought it. What changed?

There are several contributing factors, but the one that seems to have made one of the biggest differences is that now my learners have a relevant reason to write and communicate. They have an audience who is going to read almost everything that they write thanks to the use of the digital tools we have access to in our classroom.

When you come into our classroom, it is very rare that you don’t see one my students at a classroom computer, writing. As soon as that student finishes, you will find three or four more enthusiastic writers clamoring to get to the keyboard next. What are they doing?

They are blogging.

This is a tool that none of my students have ever used before they come to 5th grade. We spend the first week of school setting the groundwork by learning about netiquette and cyber-bullying. This leads us into many deep discussions which produces several lessons on blogging: what it is, how it’s used, its purpose, and its similarities and differences to other types of writing.

One of my initial thoughts as I was leading my writers into blogging was that I wanted to give them the opportunity to reflect and share their thinking and learning on the different content areas with one other. This would encourage students who may not feel comfortable speaking up during a class discussion—due to special needs, English as a second language, low self-esteem, or shyness—to speak up and join the conversations. It would give everyone a voice.

Another thought I had was that blogging would give me a lot of information about my learners. I knew I would be able to determine their understanding of content area standards, use of grammar and mechanics to get across ideas to their audience, personal challenges, and likes and dislikes. I felt confident that by my students using blogs I would be better able to tailor my lessons and mini lessons to their individual needs and interests.

Our Tool of Choice

For this adventure in writing, I chose to use KidBlog. What I like about KidBlog is that it allows the teacher to control what gets published and the audience that sees the blogs. We start off at the beginning of the year where only the people in our class can see the posts and comments. Then I gradually open it for family members to enter as guests and make comments. Once the students are ready for a much larger audience, I open it for comments from all over the world. If you are on Twitter, there is a hashtag, #comment4kids, where you can post that your students would like some comments. Educators and students from all over the world will post comments to the students’ blogs.

For the entire year, I keep the feature where all posts and comments must be approved by me before they are published. I do this for several reasons. The most important one is so that I know all of the content coming out of our blogs. The second is that I want to make sure I don’t miss something important. If a writer demonstrates a weakness in subject-verb agreement or they misunderstand a math algorithm, I want to be able to quickly clear up that misunderstanding. Usually, I call them to the computer and have them explain to me what their thought process was when they wrote a particular post. Many times, they catch their own mistake. However, if they don’t, I have the opportunity to teach a quick little lesson. Since my students set goals, usually this becomes one of their goals until they feel like they’ve mastered it.

Another reason I read everything my students write is because I want to make sure that there is nothing offensive or inappropriate published. Since we have a very diverse population in our classroom and in our audience, sometimes students forget about making the best choices for their entire audience. This is a powerful life lesson for learners to master.

Setting Expectations

Due to having an extremely prescriptive curriculum, we are lucky to have scheduled time for writing twice a week. Blogging addresses that limitation because students can work on their blogs from home or at school. They also have a scheduled time at least once a week during our reading block to blog for 30 minutes. Since many of my students arrive about an hour before school begins, they come to the classroom when I arrive and spend that time blogging as well.

As with all of our projects, my students set the goals, expectations, or rubric. Since these are their blogs, they needed to establish the expectations, not me. Since the group of students changes each year, the expectations vary. After many conversations with my current students, they set expectations that addressed the craft of writing, grammar and mechanics, content, and safety.

Were these the exact expectations that I would have set? Not necessarily, but these are their blogs, their writing, their conversations. This gives them ownership of their writing. These writers also understand that if at any point they don’t like these expectations, they can alter them because they belong to them.

Goals Achieved

So back to my original blogging goals. Did blogging serve as a way for my students to grow, reflect, connect, and join the conversation? Was I able to meet individual needs in each of my students? Yes…and much more.

My students have found their voices. They reflect on their learning. They challenge one another’s thinking in a respectful manner. They share books, thoughts, feelings, and suggestions for tackling challenges they might be facing. I have been able to pinpoint misunderstandings or weaknesses much faster because they are writing and I’m reading their writing much more often.

What I didn’t foresee was the amount of creativity that would flourish just by giving my students an audience with whom they could have a conversation about their writing. This year, my writers have composed poetry, short stories, talk shows, interviews, and fables. Their writing regularly includes book reviews for their peers. One student even wrote an open letter for our board of education about some changes she thought they needed to make. All of this amazing writing was student-driven.

Because these students have a tool that supports the way today’s students want to learn and they were given the freedom to guide how they used it, my students have delved into new types of writing and have begun to share it with an audience that is active. Learners who told me just a few weeks ago that they hated writing are now excited with the anticipation of sitting down at a keyboard to compose something new for others to read.

On this “I Love to Write Day,” my students will have surpassed 900 blog posts cumulatively. Do they love to write? Without a doubt! And your students can too by opening up their world of writing with blogging.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-6 (Stenhouse, 2011). She travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com.