Last week, we finished our incredible “Quad Blogging” experience with Switzerland, Czech Republic and Thailand. Each class had the opportunity to be the bloggers and the commenters during our month long experiment. The goal was for the teachers and the students to see improvements in their writing. As a teacher, I can honestly say, it was truly remarkable to see how hard my class worked during these four weeks. They were determined to write quality comments, and they really paid attention to the RUBRIC so they could achieve the “expert” level of commenting. In their commenting, most of my students were writing comments that were one or two sentences long without any true connections to the blogger’s writing. Now my students are writing one to two paragraphs with connections, links and impressive reflections. Regarding their blog posts, most of my class was already writing at an “accomplished” level based on the RUBRIC. They were all so eager to hit the “expert” level, which most of them did achieve. They began to add multi-media, links, more sophisticated vocabulary, and they continued to let their personality shine in their writing.
This week, I allowed the students to reflect on their “Quad Blogging” experience. They had some phenomenal observations to share about their involvement in this experiment. I have chosen two of the best reflections to share as our “Posts of the Week!”
Blogging Mania
March 29th, 2012 by itamarl
For the past month my class and me have been Quad-Blogging. Quad-Blogging is when Quad [Four] classes get together from all over the world and each week one of the classes blog. The other people would be commenting on that classes blog(s). So that’s what happened, are contestants were Thailand, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and obviously us. The first week it was Thailand’s turn. Our teacher made it so that every kid in that classroom got at least one comment. Rewind, just a week before some teachers in our school gave us a comment rubric to prepare us for the Quad-Blogging. I will show you some examples of before and after. This was a comment that I left for my friend Jake.
Before = Wow. Jake just because of that I know a lot more about G.W.C. You know in second grade my class read a book about G.W.C., but I think your little summery was way more sufficient. This was a comment I made to somebody on the Thailand blog.
During =
Dear Trent,
Wow. That was a really good post. At my school I have P.E. three times a week. The days that I have P.E. are Tuesday-Thursday. I think you and I have a lot in common. I think I’m pretty good at ping pong and in P.E. class we were studying basketball. I love basketball, it’s my favorite sport. I’ve been playing in a league for four years, have you played in a league? I unfortunately am not acquainted with pickle ball, so I have decided to send you this link to a pickle ball website. Here it is, pickle ball. I wish I knew you better.
Itamarl, MJGDS, Team USA.
There is a big difference isn’t there? So anyways that’s what we were doing for the first week. In the middle of that week I thought that maybe only my class and Thailand were doing this. Then one day I saw a person on one of the blogs from Lucerne, which is in Switzerland. I read the comment and knew it had to be because of Quad-Blogging.
The next week I was starting to get a bit lazy. Oh yes my comments were still very quality its just that I wasn’t doing any links. The other problem was that all the other classes in the Quad-Blogging thing took English as there second language, so a lot of what they wrote was limited because they don’t have as many words to express themselves. Also many of the words were misspelled so it was hard to understand. The Czech kids were third graders so they only had a few posts. It took me days to leave them a quality comment. I will show you. Here it is. Dear Sahib, It wasn’t one of my favorite books, but I might try again when I’m older. Anyways, last year in our reading books, my class stumbled on a little story about Winn-Dixie. It was about how Opal made friends with this librarian and the librarian [who had had a bad experience with bears] thought that Winn-Dixie was one. Also, I think that since you stated ten things about yourself I can picture you. Here’s a link for more information about the book you read. About.
Itamar, MJGDS, Team USA
Well that was a comment on a reflection on the book, Because Of Winn-Dixie.
The third week was an ordinary week except for one thing Friday was a special day because Rebecca’s grandpa came in. He, in my opinion is an expert commenter so we all were happy, he told us about his life and how he was good at commenting. He was very modest and used a high vocabulary of words. My second favorite part was when he told about when he had been a social worker and that in school the teachers promoted high vocabulary. My favorite part was when he said that he had seen my blog. I’ll show you a comment he left me.
Thank you Itamar for helping me to learn so much about Michael Jordan. In fact I am going to read more about him your book report inspired me to want to. I have always admired Michael Jordan and knew that he lead an amazing life. Itamar your book report indeed let me see what an amazing life Michael Jordan had. I found it interesting to learn that Michael Jordan worked hard to achieve good grades and to do well in school. Michael was indeed very intelligent because he realized education is important and his remaining modest even with his tremendous success is a great tribute. Itamar I too particularly love reading a book that is so well done that I do not want to put it down until I am finished. I am glad you enjoy reading Itamar, reading is very important. You can be proud of your book report and that you are a reader.
It’s amazing isn’t it? The last week I did lots of blogging and it was really fun. The person who gave me the most comments was a girl named Taha.
I learned a lot about commenting I advise you go to Langwitches to learn more.
This was Itamar‘s reflection.
Quad Blogging
Posted on March 29, 2012
Before I start talking about quad blogging, you need to know what it is. Your guess is probably four people, who blog together, but no. It’s WAY more than that!
Quad blogging is when four classroom blogs blog, and comment on each other’s blogs. There are four weeks, and four classroom blogs from around the world, with student blogs linked to it (Czech Republic, Switzerland, Thailand, and of course us, USA). Each week one class posts, and the three other classes comment on that blog. That’s how it works each week.
Now that you have an idea of what quad blogging is, let me tell you a little about our class’s experience with quad blogging.
With our class during quad blogging, we used a commenting and post writing rubric, which would tell you what you need to do to become an “expert” blogger. From the rubric I feel that my entire class (including me) has improved on not only writing skills, but also expressing our feelings about the post we are writing or commenting on, and putting it into our work, in a creative manner. This experience is fantastic for our learning in creative writing, and really made me change from “capable” to “expert”.
I loved this experience, because I got to “meet” new people through my favorite type of writing, blogging. I met Sine, Angelina, Jessica, Nalin, Samantha, Tess, Anezka, Emilka R, and Amandine through this wonderful program.
I truly will cherish this experience of quad blogging from now, till whenever there will be a touch-screen TV! (:
This was Jamie‘s reflection.
Please check out the rest of our class’s reflections by clicking on the links to the right. They are all spectacular and show evidence of a true learning experience.
