“What do students normally do with their posters and English papers when they’re done with them?” asked Breen Reardon, English teacher, to his fourth bell literature class.
The answer from the majority of his students was that their completed projects are often thrown away or deleted off flash drives.
To prevent trifold projects from collecting dust under beds and keep students’ hard work from going to waste, the junior American Literature classes have converted their year-long research paper to blog form.
Throughout the course of the year, each student has selected one topic of interest to immerse in and study. After reading books, articles, and watching interviews, the juniors have been asked to make their own blog websites, and use this method to report their findings.
“I think blogs are a great idea,” said Talia Bailes, 11. “They are a way to get us to express what we’re learning in class and apply it to the everyday world.”
Each student’s website is posted online and can be made public for anyone in the world to see. Rather than making a poster or power point for one-time usage, the blogs being created are more permanent.
“I enjoy blogging and integrating technology into our everyday English curriculum,” said Grace Hertlein, 11.
As the rest of the year progress, more and more posts will be uploaded to the English students’ websites on their respective topics.
The first few blog entries have been posted on each site; here are a few blogs and their topics you may be interested in:
- Space Exploration: www.nakulnarendran.wordpress.com
- Dreams: http://jennadamec.weebly.com/
- Icons of today http://iconsoftodayandyesterday.weebly.com/
- Situations in Uganda http://mattgreenmachine.weebly.com/
- Music http://jollyhancher.wordpress.com/
