Thursday, February 19, 2009

Alternative to Bell Work

In my graduate classes we use discussion boards on a regular basis as a complement to our normal classes. I have decided to test the waters of using discussion boards as bell work for my homeroom class. These discussions will consist of conversations that we begin in class and then continue our topic discussions on our Ning Network. Students, there are a few rules to remember when posting on our morning discussion boards:
* Contribute interesting and thoughtful comments
* Present examples that support your discussion
* Raise good questions about our topics
* Listen (or read) and respond appropriately to others
For today's assignment, students were asked to continue on our conversation that we begin the other day. The question that was posed to them was, "is it fair to play on a person's emotions to sell a product?"
Visitors, you can check out their responses to this topic by clicking on the link below. For our morning discussion tomorrow, students will continue the conversation by replying to another student's response.
Morning Discussion

Mr. McClung

6 comments:

Wm Chamberlain said...

The threaded comments can help with this, but perhaps you need to look at a chat room to create more of a discussion. Right now they don't have to defend their argument when another student disagrees.

jkmcclung said...

Your right, we started threaded comments today and I got some fairly good discussions. Chat room has been a bit of a problem so fair. Students tend to treat it more like a chat room than a discussion.

Little Voices, Little Scholars. said...

Hi there!
Thank you for visiting our class blog. In our class, we have to practise speaking in good English and we are little ( 6 year olds ) and most of us do not speak English at home.

From,
Mrs She and Room 5 Pt England School Auckland New Zealand.

jkmcclung said...

@Mr. C this last Friday, I did challenge my students to continue the conversation by disagreeing with a classmate, you should check out some of their response.

Anonymous said...

Kia Ora from Point England School, New Zealand. This discussion board sounds interesting. I hope you have been making lots of progress. Thank you for leaving comments on our blog and we will be sure to visit you again.

Miss Lavakula and Room 10 @ Pt England School

Anonymous said...

Thanks for visiting our blog. I'm glad that our class blog has inspired you with your teaching.
There are so many great classroom blogs out there that I get ideas from also.
We would love to read more of your blog and add you to our blogroll.
Keep up the fantastic work!

Mr. T