How Blogging Can Be Effective In a Second Language Classroom

There are many, many ways that blogging can be effective in a Spanish classroom! I plan to use a few of these ideas when it comes to my own classroom and I hope that you can benefit from them, as well!

A teacher can create a blog, and students can post and tag (so the teacher knows who posted and can keep track) the blog in Spanish and respond to each other's posts in Spanish. This promotes a strong classroom community as well as a writing and communication skills between students. This will also allow students to get to know each other better. It's good to allow the students to create their own topics so they will stay interested in keeping the blog updated and active.

Another good way to utilize a blog in the classroom is to for the teacher to post homework assignments and updates on what's going on in the classroom or several classrooms for the parents to check for their students so they can stay up to date, as well. I believe that the parents will be grateful as long as the teacher keeps the blog up to date with the assignments and classroom information. For example, if there is a project due in a month, the teacher can let the parents know so they can get a jump start on it.

Finally,  students can read the blogs of Spanish speakers as an assignment and hopefully become intrigued and continue to read them and comment on them as well. Here is an example of one of these blogs that I have read and sometimes respond to. It is very interesting to get a discussion going with a native speaker of Spanish! I hope my students can benefit just as much as I have and continue to do!

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