Friday, November 15, 2013

Thursday, February 21, 2013

What should I blog about?

Hi, Sixth Graders!!

I'm writing to you from Lester's Blog. He's a pretty bad blogger since he's a cat, so I don't think he will mind too much.



Your teacher and I are friends and we also work together. I found out your class is blogging, which I thought was really awesome! Since I love blogging, I wanted to talk to your class about it. But...


You would think it wouldn't be that hard....I am definitely a BLOGGER!


10 Years
4 Blogs
2,000+ Posts
1,000+ Comments
360,000+ Page Views
12,000+ Monthly Page Views

How do I decide what to write about?

Sometimes it's easy...
Sometimes it's not.


If you really want to get into the habit of writing regularly, and especially if you  want to try and build up a community of people who follow you, you will need to try and post at least every few days. Or, if you want to get a good grade, you want to write about something pretty cool so that your classmates and your teacher like what you write about!

What happens on those days you have no idea what to write about? Some of you might ask friends or family for ideas, or you may have a theme. I looked at some of your posts and I saw at least one of you talked about video games as a theme. If you have a theme, it makes it a little easier to come up with ideas.

But what if you don't have a theme, or want to be free to come up with something different each time?

Let's talk about a stream of consciousness. This is where you take a few minutes and just write. I don't care if you write the words blah blah blah blah or total jibberish like asodfhoahfa for most of that time.

Every time a real word pops into your head, as silly as it may be, whether it's fish, or whiskers, or duh, or the, or ipad, or blah, I want you to write it.

Maybe 95% of what you write is blah, and you have the words "skateboard" in there three times, or "sad" or "happy" or "Mom" or "friend". Or maybe you actually have something real in your head that you want to write. WHATEVER IS IN YOUR HEAD, you write.

It might look like this... blah blah blah blah ummmm ummm blah blah blah ummmm fish....I love fish soo much....blah blah blah roses....blah happy day....blah cat...blah blah fish fish fish fish fish fish...blah blah blah...fish um fish adsfhoahfoahfa fish....



The word that popped up most in my stream of consciousness was "fish". Now, I think I feel like writing on my free-choice blog about fish. That will be my topic today because it rose to the top and i feel like it the most. But what about fish? Hmm...was it because...

Fish: I HATE FISH SO MUCH BECAUSE MY MOM MADE ME EAT IT LAST NIGHT

Fish: I love fish! I want to eat a fish sandwich at McDonalds so bad!

Fish: I have a pet goldfish named Fishie and he is soooo cute!

Fish: My cat accidentally ate my friend's goldfish and I feel bad.

Fish: I want to get a fish tank with a baby shark!

Fish: I want to go fishing with my dad! 

Once you decide what kind of fish you want to talk about, you can decide the details. In my case...I think parrot fish are sooo cute! Aww I just want to snuggle him. 



I want you all to pull out your iPads and we're going to set a timer for 4 minutes. During that time I want you to just do write a stream of consciousness. You are NOT trying to write your blog post, you're just trying to write whatever pops into your brain, which might be a lot of blah blah blah or jibberish or even aldfjadfljaldjfaldfjladjf....I just want you to focus on occasional words or feelings popping into your brain, like popcorn. No complete sentences, just be very informal, no topic necessary. 




















Now I'm going to set a timer for just 2 minute, I want you to look back what you wrote over and see if you can find 1-3 words that pop out at you or something that you think could be a topic for your blog. Maybe it's a single word like bicycle, or fish, or cat, or whiskers. Maybe it's a feeling like sad, angry, happy, joyful... What is it about that word that made it pop into your brain, and why? 

Okay, it's time for me to head out, but hopefully there's time for you to do a little bit more writing with your teacher. I am wanting you to work on your free-choice blog, using whatever came up to the surface of your brain when you did your stream of consciousness, adding lots of fun and creative details so it's interesting for your classmates and teacher to read! I'm hopefully going to be reading them too!