Step 4: Quality Commenting (lll)

 Six activities for developing commenting skills 
  Here are some suggestions for activities you can use to develop your students’ commenting skills.
1. Commenting videos.
  Videos provide an excellent explanation of the blogging, the commenting process, the impact of quality blogging on student literacy, and the importance of writing as a part of a global audience.
2. Create commenting guidelines for your blog.
  Facilitate a collaborative discussion with your students to create your own commenting guidelines. Remember, use others’ guidelines for ideas but don’t copy others work without permission and acknowledgement. Here are some examples of commenting guidelines to look for different age group:

•   Sometimes commenting guidelines have more of an academic focus, like these ones from the old English 10 blog.
• Heather Alexander’s TAG approach that she uses for her year 9-12 students could be used for any age. TAG stands for: 

           Tell them something you like about their work, Ask them a question, Give a suggestion.
3. Create a commenting guideline poster.
  A poster is a great way to make a visual representation of your commenting guidelines. A poster could be made by the teacher or the students. You can make a digital poster in Canva, PowerPoint, or any number of online tools Mrs. E. made his Guidelines poster using Adobe Spark , which is now free for teachers and students. Guidelineposter
4. Develop a quality comment evaluation guide or rubric.

• Point system  : Linda Yollis’ class uses a point system for evaluating comments. A one point comment is a general comment that doesn’t add much to the conversation. A two point comment is a good comment that adds something to the conversation.
• Rubric:  Another idea for setting standards for commenting, writing, or blogging in general is using a rubric. Teachers could make this to meet the needs of their class,( as a set of exam rules), or students could create their own.

 5. Get your students to practice commenting.
  Publish a blog post about commenting and what you define as a quality comment and then have your students practice leaving a “quality “ comment on the post. Check out Jan Smith’s “ I’m New Here” post. It’s an excellent example of introducting students to reading student blog posts and learning how to write comments.
6. Try paper blogging.
  Paper blogging is a hands-on, concrete way of introducting students to writing posts and comments using paper and post-it notes.
7. Other advice and tips
  Write your comment like a letter by including a greeting , content, and a closing. Compliment the writer in a specific way, ask a question, or add new information to the post. Don’t reveal personal information about yourself or others in your comment. Try to use correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, and spacing. Finally, always read over your comment and edit before submitting.