Book reviews at Meole Brace
Another Friday morning at Meole and the Year 7 group were getting ready to start using their blogs as a book review platform. After getting settled in and logged on, they went through the guidelines for writing book reviews and made sure their first paragraph had all the details to identify the book. This was because we were going to use trackbacks from their individual blogs to the main blog. They all had the trackback URI copied and were ready to go…some had started writing excellent book review posts to their blogs…and the fire bell went off. So it was out onto the yard to stand in the sunshine while the school was checked for safety. Everything was OK but the time was gone and no more blogging was done.
I think next time I’ll ask the class to post their book reviews on the main Meole English blog, then use trackback when they decide to comment on somebody else’s review. Using a technique like that means they use their critical review skills in both writing their own piece of work and in appraising somebody else’s. In fact, the response to a critique could be a piece of persuasive writing.
One important lesson that might be learned from the firebell episode is that they ought to produce their work in a locally-savable medium before posting. Although this reduces the spontaneity of the blog it will mean that any unforeseen mishaps will be accommodated by having their work in a local copy. Many had started off in Word but neglected to save when the excitement started. Ah well, it’ll be different next time.