Why Join The Primary Blogging Community?

We are in full swing in the second part of our Primary Blogging Community activities.  (Here is an older post describing what The Primary Blogging Community is) Back in October and November we built relationships with our groups by visiting and commenting on each others' classroom blogs.  Some groups used Skype and Google Hangout to give a "face" to the classes we were blogging with.
The second part of the blogging community started the second week in January.  Instead of exploring and commenting on classroom blogs, we are focusing on students blogs.  My class was the first focus class in my group.   This means 4 other classes read and commented on my students' kidblogs that week.  This was a great opportunity to generate some interest and excitement around my students' blogs.  On the first day there were 20 new comments from Mrs. Leech's class.  By Friday, my students had over 130 comments from other students on their blogs. You can envision the excitement and energy in my class each day when my students would come in and go straight to their blogs searching and reading their new comments from the day before.
Along with generating excitement, it has generated an urgency for my children to write new posts.  When we do an activity on the iPads, my students want to know when they can post their learning on their blogs.  A few days ago we were creating  popplets for science on the Popplet App.  It was so amazing to see how my students were so concerned with uploading their learning to their blogs so their "friends"  could respond.  My students are becoming more aware of who their audience is and the purpose of their writing.  I asked them this morning why they wanted to upload their Popplets to their blogs,  and they responded with, "So we can teach other grade 1 and 2 students about solids and liquids!"  
We are now in our fourth week of the Primary Blogging Community and my students are learning new things from other students' blogs.  Today we went on Mrs. Ziemke's classes' blogs and my students listened to the posts that children created using croak.it.  Now my students want to learn how to use it on their blogs.  We also looked to see how many people have visited our kidblogs since October.  Over 10000 people!  I can't think of a better reason than that to help engage your reluctant writers to write.  They have a purpose, they have an audience and they are excited and engaged in the activity.
We will be starting a new Primary Blogging Session in March.  If you are interested in joining this wonderful group of educators and you want to give your students a fantastic opportunity to learn, share, and grow with their peers please sign up here and I will be in touch with you.