Walking into the classroom one can only see the multiple book cover projects on the counters, students reading and writing comments about thier peers work and once in awhile a conversation between student’s about the information they are finding or questions they are asking about the person on the book cover.
Last Friday, I introduced commenting through paper blogging. What amazed me the most was the positive energy that radiated from my students upon explaining the assignment to them. I did not receive one complaint. In fact, every student was engaged the entire class period and left comments which were intelligent and responded to other peers views, ideas and thoughts. I feel that presentations with the covers would not have produced the same outcome.
I have realized, through the paper blogging, that when students are left to their own accord and given little instruction (more a guidance) then they seem to flourish and succeed. My students have an inner intelligence which most of the time goes unused. Why? because teachers like myself provide students with examples, directions and tell the students in one way or another exactly what they want to see on the assignment or project. The students then produce what we want, but I have to question, is that really what I want? After much thought on the paper blogging, I realized that my students have the ability and intelligence to flourish in my classroom without my hindrance and strategic planning. Now granted, I did give my students directions, examples I wrote and told them what they could comment on, and needless to say most of them followed what I had on the board. However, after thinking about the commenting I honestly feel that without specific guidelines the outcome would have resulted in the same type of comments. So, with future lesson plans I am going to try and make the topics broad enough for the students to become creative high level thinkers in their own way with, of course, little guidelines from me. Whether it will work or not, I will let you know!
