Writing Your First Blog Post

Your first blog post is due Friday, October 28. Hopefully you have been warming up and are ready to race into blogs!


Some things to know:

I. Rubric for Blog Posts: Here is the blog that I will use to assess your writing. 

Criteria	Score/Comments (0-5 pts)
1.       Author’s Purpose/Focus: writer wrote about one thought-provoking focus; focus is clear throughout
2.       Details/Elaboration: writer supported main idea with variety of relevant details (textual evidence, personal details, deep thinking, sensory details, etc.)
3.       Organization: paragraphs are organized in a smooth, intentional way; there are smooth transitions between sentences and paragraphs
4.       Voice/Tone/Creativity: writing is authentic and unique to the writer; language is appropriate for the audience; writing is creative and interesting
5.       Grammar/Conventions: the writer has proofread the work; spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar are correct

II. Brief list of topics to write about:

·         One aspect of the book I love the most is…
·         The character I can most relate to is…
·         This book reminds me of…
·         One question this book raises is…
·         An important symbol in the book is…
·         The archetypes in the book are…
·         The author’s purpose is…
·         One important conflict in the book is…
·         The protagonist or antagonist changes in the text … 

III. How to get started on your first blog post:

1.       Read some mentor texts before you begin to get a better idea of what you can write. On my blog, scroll to the bottom and look for Noteworthy Student Blogs on the right side of this page. Click on some of the students’ blogs and read some of their entries. You may also read other blogs to get inspiration.

2.       Brainstorm. Choose the book you are going to write about, something you recently finished or are about halfway through. Here are some ways to get started:

a.       Use post-its to note important parts of the text

b.      List themes, character changes, events, settings, conflicts, etc. that you can think deeply about

c.       Freewrite from perspective of one of the characters

d.      Draw a map or web of important ideas you have around one aspect of the book (character, setting, archetypes, theme, etc.)

e.      Make a Venn diagram to compare two characters or settings, etc.

f.        Unpack your favorite quotation; do a web similar to what we did in class

g.       Create a character identity chart

h.      Track the hero’s journey and determine theme based on this journey and how the hero changed.

3.       Choose your focus. The focus/main idea should be a thoughtful.  Ex. What disturbs me most about Jonas’s community in The Giver by Lois Lowry is the freedom from feeling.

4.       Plan your blog post. Write an outline. You may use one of the formats I give you or create your own.

5.       Write your blog post on a Microsoft Word document first then copy and paste onto new blog post. You can’t always rely on the Internet so make sure you have the document saved elsewhere.

6.       Revise.

7.       Proofread and edit your work. Finally, publish!