A Recipe for Blogging

Teaching Exceptional Children is published by Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and comes out 6 times a year. It is an excellent magazine with great ideas and strategies to use in the classroom. You must be a member of CEC to get this magazine but it is worth the cost of the membership to get such quality publications. If you are not a member, you might ask someone in your special education department if they are a member and see if you can borrow this magazine or you might check with the local library or local university library.

In the November/December 2012 issue, there is an article on “Digital Access - Using Blogs to Support Adolescent Writers with Learning Disabilities” by Sarah R. Jones.

I really liked this article because it was written by a teacher for other teachers. This is a strategy that she has used in the classroom and it was successful. Why reinvent the wheel? If there are teachers out there sharing ideas with others, why not use it! Of course I would tweak this to fit the needs of my classroom but the concepts would definitely work.

Here are some notes that I’ve taken from this article.
1. The author explains blogs and why to use them in the classroom for teachers who don’t understand the concept.
2. The author gives a procedure to follow; a step by step recipe for success.
3. This article is well written and easy to understand.
4. The author doesn’t just stop at the end of the writing process. She explains how commenting is an essential part of blogging.
5. There is also the factor of maintaining a blog.
If you are considering having your class start blogging, this is an excellent article to start with.