Blogging

This Saturday, I started teaching another cohort of NSS in Town Centre. In the second session, when I talked about the school-based curriculum planning, I mentioned four strategies to plan our curriculum effectively, one of which was about how to integrate classroom learning and independent learning. I used blogging as an example. First, I showed the participants one practical paper on how to set up a class blog. Second, I showed my own blog to them and highlight two blogs of one eight-year-old and one nine-year-old. I thought they were impressed since blogging can actually motivate all walks of life to write, especially, in English. I also mentioned a few advantages of blogging:

1. Students have a sense of belonging and a sense of achievement as they can witness their work gets published.

2. Students tend to be more serious and conscious in their writing if they know the teacher is not the only person who reads their written work.

3. Blogging can create a learning community in which both students and teachers can respond to each other writing such as posting comments.

4. As blogging has no rigid timeframe, it can be flexibly used inside and outside classroom. Blogging can be a powerful tool for self-access work which is also one of the features in New Senior Curriculum.

Given that there are so many advantages of blogging, you may want to set up a class blog and start communicating with your students electronically! Why not?