I downloaded a book on the iBook store recently, titled Creating Authentic Stories for iPad: Publishing Student Authors on the iBooks Store. Right away when I started reading it, one thing that really grabbed my attention is that the subject matter of the book is applicable for teachers of all grade levels. This book as well as many others that are apart of the One Best Thing are free and great resources for teachers.

The book begins discussing that all children are excited to make-up and share their stories, but that excitement fades when they are asked to write them down. They become frustrated, trying to remember what happens next. With iPads, children are able to “do.” They are able to build their stories with their fingers.

After writing the basis of their story, they can add photographs. However, it is recommended to not have the child write the entire story before adding photographs. The search for photos is exciting and encourages the child to continue working on their story.

Another engaging aspect of publishing a book to the iBook store is that the student actually experiences the publishing process. They write the story, add photos, and revise. They go through the actual publication process, much like professional authors do. This is exciting to the students as well as makes them feel that their writing is important, because they are actually publishing it.

While younger students would be more likely to create shorter stories with more pictures, older students who enjoy writing and are considering a career related to writing are able to write fuller, deeper texts to publish. This is also a good way for these students to begin to gain publicity and also gain advice to better their writing.

This week’s blog concerns a topic that most English teachers are concerned with: writing. Constantly, we as English teachers are working on improving our students’ writing. Therefore, we are always looking for tips that will help us better help our students.

In the blog, it mentions that when blogging, students are much more likely to be freer and in turn produce much better writing. Permanent computers in the classroom aide with this, because students are given a constant opportunity to blog during class time. Classrooms without permanent computers are at a disadvantage because blogging does not occur as frequently.

Students also reported that they liked blogging more than the traditional paper and pencil assignments. They like the blogs because they can write anything they want, instead of being told what to write.

Even though blogging is viewed more as informal assessment, students still take it seriously. They took time to organize their thoughts and make sure what they wrote was correct. Students also reported that teachers were much more positive in their comments when commenting on the blogs as opposed to other traditional assignments. The students were more accepting of the comments because they were positive. The students also mentioned that they realized the audience was the entire world, so they had to take that into consideration.

I think a class blog is something I could easily implement in my future classroom. For daily points or in place of exit tickets, some days the students could blog about what we are doing or questions they still have. At this point, they can reach more resources than just me as their teacher.

The blog I read discussed the practice of averaging grades in the classroom. The blog is written by Dr. Justin Tarte. One thought he included in the blog is that through averaging grades we as teachers are saying that our teaching does not have any impact on student learning. While this is a rather bold statement, it does hold some validity when discussing averaging grades. If a student is able to average a B letter grade, but does this through failing one assignment and mastering the others, we are saying that the concept learned on the assigned an F was given is not important.

Also included with this idea is that students can all earn the same letter grade, but each can get there in very different ways. Dr. Tarte posted the following graphic in the blog:

This graphic shows how each student earned the same letter grade and even percentage, but they all got to that grade differently. Student 6 is able to completely not do an assignment and still earn the same grade as a student who performed average throughout the semester, as shown with Student 3. Is this fair?

As educators, we have to think about the message this sends to our students. We are telling them it is acceptable to fail or not do an assignment, if the average grade is still high enough. As educators, each assignment our students complete should be viewed as valuable and therefore we should make sure each grade matters.