Why My Students Must Blog

I am a writing teacher. No matter what subject I’m teaching I am a writing teacher. I believe writing is one of the most important skills we help our students develop and if we can transform our students into writers then we have given them a key to the world. Fortunately, most of my post-secondary career has been in writing classrooms, so I was expected to teach writing, but this year my teaching load has been only First Year Seminar. While my subject area for FYS is comic books and superheroes, I am still trying to create writers.

I have two primary tools I use to foster the development of writers – community (see Community Doesn’t Just Happen) and low stakes writing (see Avoid a Grading Avalanche). I believe strongly in the power of community to support learning in general and writing in specific. I talk about social capital in my classes and model it for students as well as use it for many class activities (think Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development). Our class blog assignment supports both community development and low stakes writing.

Read the full “Why My Students Must Blog” post on Metawriting blog at: http://metawriting.deannamascle.com/


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