Extending the classroom walls: using academic blogging as an intervention strategy to improve critical literacy skills with elementary students

Abstract

‘Academic blogging’ is a way of extending the primary classroom walls and enhancing learning through collaborative reflective responses to open-ended questions from prescribed text. Students learn from each other, develop critical literacy skills, voice their opinions and ask questions through blogging. This pedagogical approach broaches the areas of social media etiquette, cognitive dissonance, Information Communication Technologies, collaborative learning and utilises virtual conversations to deepen student's understanding of text. Through the methodology of Action Research with the spiral steps of; Plan, Act, Observe and Reflect an intervention strategy is devised to improve the critical literacy skills of Year 5 students in the comprehension skills of metacognition and reflection. A strategy was devised that involved the creation of a class blogosphere to share reflective insights on a class novel. While the children's results were positive using this intervention strategy the teacher's own learning as an educator and researcher is evident through this action research project.