How We Blog

Purpose of these blogs:

You will be keeping a reading blog for the remainder of the year to showcase your understanding of the novels you choose to read (normally). Writing a blog forces you to think deeper and make connections with the stories. I will be checking your blogs periodically for your understanding.

Part of being a "Blogger" means you actively participate in the blogging community, so you will also be sharing your blogs with your classmates, parents, and other teachers. You might even get the interest of other students around the world! This means that you need to be reading others' blogs and leaving comments for them as well. Since people will ultimately be leaving you comments about your posts, you are expected to be attentive to the questions and comments of your followers and respond to what they say.

So let's get blogging!

Expectations:

• Due dates posted to MOODLE calendar, and due by the end of that day, no exceptions.
• 1 post about the reading for the previous week
• 2 comments left on two different peer's blog 
• 1 response to each comment left on your blog 

Your Blog Post Should Include:

• 3 paragraphs
• 1st paragraph: summary of the previous week's chapters
• 2nd paragraph: text response
• 3rd paragraph: Final thoughts and comments
• Need some sort of visual enhancement
• video clip
• image
• GIF
• Meme

Text Responses

You will choose 1 textual reference each week to respond to and analyze in some way. You need to write the quote directly from the book and include the page number. Then, choose from one or two of the following ways to respond to the text:

1. Identify the author's particular choice in words, literary devices, or any other techniques you know of or that we discuss in class
2. Your personal reaction to the text, such as feelings, thoughts, or empathy towards the characters
3. A question you have about the character, theme, phrase, symbol, or anything that makes you wonder
4. Make a connection to your own life or something else you have read
5. Comparison and/ or contrast between two characters
6. Anything else you have on your mind and are thinking about
7. Something that is confusing you.

Your responses should be your original ideas and expressed clearly. You don't want your readers trying to guess what you mean. You are expected to respond in a thoughtful, meaningful way (1 sentence responses would not be considered thoughtful or meaningful).

This is a blog post. Your readers will not have the choices from above as a reference, so you should not reference them in your post. Your blog should sound like your natural voice. For example:

"He had waited a long time for this special December. Now that it was almost upon him, he wasn't frightened, but he was… eager, he decided. He was eager for it to come. And he was excited, certainly. All of the Elevens were excited about the event that would be coming so soon.

But there was a little shudder of nervousness when he thought about it, about what might happen.

Apprehensive, Jonas decided. That's what I am." (4) 

I find it interesting how much time Jonas has spent deciding on the perfect and precise word used to describe how he is feeling right now. Why is a young boy thinking so much about a word. I myself do not normally give so much thought to a word in order to describe how I am feeling. What is making Jonas contemplate his feelings in such a way?

Final Thoughts and Comments:

This paragraph should be spent wrapping up your post in some way. You can make a prediction about what might happen next. You can begin thinking about potential themes of the novel. Or you can just conclude your post in a way that will want your reader to continue following your blog and read the next post you write.

Enhancements:

Enhancements are additional add-ons that make your post look appealing and draw your reader in. Think about why you look at magazines, social media posts, or if you already follow blogs, what makes you "like" the ones you do. Usually it is because of some sort of enhancement. You can use video or audio clips, images, GIFs or Memes, or any other type of visual that will help your reader to better understand your post, and show that you have deeper understanding and meaning of the text.

Comments

You are expected to participate in the blogging community in 2 ways.

1. The first is that you will need to comment each week on one other person's blog from our class. Your comments, like your posts, need to be thoughtful reactions to what the blogger has mentioned in the post (though not 3 paragraphs long). You could be reflecting on how you have a similar idea or question, or simply that you have a question about what the blogger has said in his/ her post. You are also welcome to challenge any statements made by the blogger, as long as you use the text to support your challenge or some other reliable reference.You might even find a way to reference your classmate's post in your next blogging post. Think of the comments as an online discussion. Remember to build on each other's ideas and move the discussion forward. Don't just simply repeat what the blogger has said. 
2. You also are expected to respond to all comments left on your blog. Your comments should answer any questions that the person has left for you to answer, or if a point is being challenged, you should defend your point using strong references and support.

Writing Style

These are blog posts and not formal essays. Therefore, your voice should be heard in these posts. You can write like yourself. There is no proper formatting, though make sure that you have used text features to make your posts easier to follow for your readers. 

Grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation will still be evaluated. These are basics to any writing and no one wants to read blog posts by people who cannot use the mechanics of writing. So care about your posts and revise them for these mistakes.