Why Blog?

Now that all our class blogs are up and running I want to outline why we are exploring this medium at Wookey.

But before writing about some of the educational benefits of children blogging it is important that I address the reasons behind my Headteacher’s blog.

My reason for doing my blog, on a semi-regular basis, is to share with you some of the experiences that your children have at Wookey Primary that you might otherwise not be aware of. Although the teachers and I try hard to maintain communication with parents and carers, the business of running a school is a demanding one, and with our focus being on the children we are aware that we are not always good at publicising the exciting work that we do with your children. We are also aware that sometimes our children compartmentalise school life in such a way as not to feel the need to share their experiences with their families.

So, why are we getting our children involved with blogging as well?

Within our yearly school development plan we have a number of strategic targets for the coming 12 months. One of these for 2014-15 is to work even harder to develop our children as ‘digital citizens’ as we are acutely aware of our responsibilities to prepare our children for their future lives in a digital world. Therefore, we are using blogging as a way of modelling positive engagement with cyber space so that our children will learn how to engage with it in a way that keeps them safe and makes the most of this wonderful resource.

We are also using blogging as a powerful tool for engaging children in writing for a ‘real’ audience. It is widely accepted that giving children a real-life reason for producing a piece of writing will lead to greater engagement and better results, and this is definitely what we are looking for at Wookey. We are only at the start of this venture, so please look out for longer creative pieces appearing in the children’s blogs very soon!

Thirdly, we are encouraging our children to take responsibility for their learning in all subject areas, and within the subject of blogging we want to start to give our children the chance to decide what they would like to write about. As with my previous point, this has been proved to raise standards in writing.

So, to finish my blog this week I would like to ask for your help. Please visit the children’s blogs and leave them a message. Let them know that you are reading their posts and you could even ask them a question, which I am sure they will enjoy answering.

Many thanks