Keep them reading

With MAP testing spread out over a two week period, my classes are all in different places in the lesson plan book. This might not be that noteworthy, but I'm thinking that the blog as an extension of the classroom should help even things out and provide opportunity for discussion that my second block class doesn't have. Tomorrow I'll be asking my second block class again to do just that - log on sometime over the period of the week. They didn't have the benefit of the laptop computers last week, but I want them to participate anyway. As to the set up of the blog, one of my second block students told me that they can hit "control F and the title of their books" to pull up the rest of the blogs from their group (provided that they use the book titles for the titles of their blogs). I'll post my own and see if that works. After talking this over this morning, I also see the danger of kids just reading posts from their own book titles, and I don't want that to happen. I DO want them to read everyone else's, so maybe I don't want to facilitate that with the creation of separate blogs. I will say that all this focus on their independent reading has sure created an interest (on their part) in new book titles and who's reading what. It's all good.