Sharing blog comments across the cluster

In year 9, our students are learning about Globalisation and the importance of staying connected.  Recently, I have been collaborating with a colleague, Elfrida at Glenbrae primary, who wanted to start a 'commenting club' between students from our schools.  Whilst our years 9 and 10 write posts every week about their learning, it would be good to see more comments from different audiences that could support our learners.

I've decided to focus on two year 9 classes and their blog connections with a few classes at years 7 and 8.  I want to track their progress and see if they can utilise comments to support their learning and their writing.

One of the year 9 classes I had the chance to catch up with today is a lovely group of students who were comfortable with posting and commenting.  A really good document that Elfrida shared with me showed how to write good quality blog posts and provided scaffolded examples of comments.    I let the class know that I will be sharing their class site with their learning blogs to the students at Glenbrae so that they could share what learning they've been up to.

Many of the students read the blogs that were shared and just before the end of the class, I asked students how they'd found reading other students blog posts and most replied that it reminded them of when they were primary school and they'd enjoyed reading them.  I relayed the fact that Globalisation involved staying connected with people and students outside of our school and that sharing our learning with the world helps support them more in their learning.  The next step could be to collaborate on a common task or event and possibly invite other primary schools in our cluster to join our 'commenting club'.