The zombies came and sucked my brains out and made me editor of a new blog written by my colleague's students. Who knew that 6th graders who have been studying MUGS (mechanics, usage, grammar) all year don't actually know that commas and apostrophes don't go in random places just to make the text look nice? I didn't know that they could tell their classmates that a title needs to be italicized (another thing they learned in MUGS), but that the rules they like to spout onto others actually applies to themselves too?
Either way, this has been a two week foray into having a great idea over coffee with a colleague to actually making it happen with only two weeks of school left. In two weeks, with one hour classes every other day, let's set up a blog, negotiate format with the 106 6th graders, look through their reading logs and choose three random books that they claim they've read, and with now one week left, let's have them post three book reviews each. Also, because it's published on the world wide web, let's make sure that they edit with us at least once.
So I have edited, not always with as much pride or care, 300 plus blog entries. I am proud of those students that stuck with it even if I had to email them three or four times until they finally got to press the big blue "publish" button. Now that it's over. . . let's do it again next year.
I am not an author, but I am awed by all the editors who put so much work and investment into every author and aspiring author. Thank you!
2 comments:
All of the hard work really shows on "Tween The Pages".
I especially loved ponob's review of Cut, "This girl, named Callie, is the disturbed protagonist of this austere story." I am not sure that I even knew what austere really meant at that age!
I second that emotion. I love doing writer workshop mainly so I can do one on one conferencing and the focus on the glaring errors each student has and hope when I read and grade the final draft at least those mistakes are gone. But consider yourself lucky that the italicized the title, I am still having problem with eigth graders who refuse to capitalized the title correctly (a huge pet peeve).
Editors Rock!
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