Using blogs with your students

Why use blogs?

Blogs are a great tool for language development and collaboration. They can be very motivating for
learners and encourage autonomy outside of the classroom.

Before beginning the blogging activities consider how you want to manage them. There are two
possible routes:

a) Students can contribute to blogs by replying directly to posts from you or from each other.
This is flexible but can get long/untidy if you have a lot of students.

b) Ask students to work in groups and plan replies together, nominating one student to post
the reply. You will need to set aside class time to do this. They can do research and
preparation outside of class.

You could use a combination of these but make sure you explain to the students what you expect in
advance. For many blogs, taking a ‘project’ style approach and setting tasks that extend over more
than one lesson works well, as they will have time to do research or prepare posts at home.

Activity aims:

 Provide practice language from the unit

 Develop online research skills
 Give students an extra opportunity to respond personally to the unit topic

Suggestions for blog activities

We recommend that you use these activities after the D lesson in each unit.

1. Learning Blog

Students are guided by specific questions to reflect on their learning and achievements.

This type of blog can be on going – that is, rather than starting and finishing as most activities do, it
could continue at different points during the course. In order for it to be successful, doing some
face-to-face work at the beginning in class is important.

Procedure:

a. Explain to students that it is important for them to think about their own learning as it can help
them improve more quickly. Ask them to suggest ideas about how a learning blog or diary would
help them. Remember to post one question at a time. You could do this once a week, a few times
each term, or whatever is suitable for your students.

b. According to level and ability, provide students with a specific question about their own learning.
Questions you could adapt to level and use include:

What helps you use grammar more accurately?

How do you revise new structures?
Why is grammar important?
What is the best way to learn new words?
How can you remember new vocabulary?
Do you practice pronunciation? How?
What helps you read better?
How can you use a dictionary most effectively?
Which websites do you use to practice your English?
c. Give the students time to think about their responses.

d. Tell students to reply to your post (not reply at the end of the thread) and give their ideas to you.

e. As follow up you could ask students to discuss different ideas in class, respond to posts from
another student or you could reply to their post. Encourage positive interactions to motivate
learning and share helpful ideas and suggestions in the group.

f. Keep a record of these blogs and near the end of the course you could a) post a summary of what
they have shared and tips for the whole group or b) talk through this in class, set up a ‘Summary –
Study Skills’ blog and ask them each to post final tips for each other.

2. Topic research

Students find out more about the unit topic through online research.

Procedure:

a. Assign students a topic area. This may be the same topic for the whole class, or different topics
for different individual students or groups.

b. Depending on level and ability, provide students with a general instruction or specific questions.

c. Consider talking to students about how they will find the information or allowing time in class for
them to plan, discuss and come up with initial ideas.

d. Create an example blog post. As well as providing written information, you could add links to
relevant websites, videos etc.

e. Tell students to create their blog post.

f. Decide on the way you would like students to follow up on the blog: this could be a) face to face in
class – giving reactions to the blogs b) online – instruct students to read the blogs by other
students/groups if applicable and asking them to post feedback or comments, or c) structured, e.g.
assigning specific feedback questions or pairing and grouping students to post responses on
specific blogs.

3. Guess who

Students find out more about the unit topic through online research and practice writing.

Procedure:

a. Assign students the role of a famous person or a person linked to the topic of the unit. E.g. a
famous sports personality for Unit 8 A2 level. You can assign one per student or one per group
depending on class numbers.

b. According to level and ability, provide students with a general instruction or specific questions.
e.g. Imagine you are xxxx. What is a typical day for him/her? What were the most important times in
his/her life? What does he/she like or dislike?

c. Give the students time to research this person.

d. Create an example blog post written from the perspective of this person. This can be short or
long depending on the level of student. They could also include photos.

e.g. I get up early every day. I usually go running for an hour. I have breakfast but I only eat healthy
food. I go to the gym and do more training. In the afternoon I do some interviews on television.
People ask me questions about why I am so fast. Who am I?

e. Tell students to create their blog post.

f. Ask students to write a response to another blog guessing who the person is. You can either let
students reply to a number of posts giving individual guesses or assign them partners or groups.

4. Student-to-student quiz

Students find out more about the unit topic through online research and practice asking questions
(rather than more typically responding).

This type of blog works best with group work and during class time.

Procedure:

a. Divide students into groups and assign each group a topic area related to the unit, e.g. Unit 7 A2
is about travel and transport so students could be asked to create a quiz on types of transport,
famous journeys and so on.

b. Depending on level and ability, provide students with a general instruction or example questions
on an example topic.

c. Give them time to research, plan and create a quiz by writing ten questions on their topic. They
can include images and other media that will help. Nominate one student per group to post the
quiz.

d. Create an example blog post showing sample questions.

e. Give students time to create their blog post, giving their quiz a name.

f. Ask the groups to post their quiz by a particular time.

g. To follow up, assign each group a quiz someone else has written. Ask the students to think about
their answers to the questions and compare face-to-face in group work. Nominate a student from
each group to post their final answers.

5. Authentic reading or graded reader review

Students are encouraged to do extensive reading and develop language skills outside of class.

Procedure:

a. Ask students to choose a graded reader, novel, magazine or any other type of written material
that interests them. These texts can be related to the topic of the unit. Students can choose an
individual text or can be assigned texts in groups (good for different levels) or even whole class.
Allowing students to choose what interests them is very motivating and they can use online
resources as well as paper copies. (An alternative would be to use film or DVD to offer practice in
extended listening and could follow a similar format.)
b. According to level and ability, provide students with a general instruction or specific questions.
e.g. Write a review of what you read. Tell us a) what is it, b) if you liked it or not, and c) why.

c. Give the students time to read.

d. Create an example blog post. This can be short or long depending on the level of student. More
advanced students can use critical thinking skills and write detailed reviews.

e. Tell students to create their blog post.

f. As a follow up students could choose one of the texts recommended by another member of the
class if they have chosen different texts and read it. They could post a reply to the person who
wrote the original review.

g. Keep a note of useful websites or resources and near the end of the course you could post these
for the students to continue using.