Writing for a Large Audience

I found an interesting article at http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/coulter.htm. It was titled Mr. Coulter’s Internet Tendency: to Infinity and Beyond. This article discussed how web publishing can improve student writing. This fourth grade teacher basically went through his process of publishing his students work to the Internet.

It is really nice to have some insight on how exactly certain teachers are implementing web publishing into their curriculum. This particular teacher would take the students journal writing and have them go through the normal draft, editing, and final copy stages. Then he would have them choose their favorite story once a month. He created a student friendly template, which I thought was a nice idea. He said that he keeps it simple because he wants the students to focus on the writing and not about the appearance of the text.

He keeps all of the students’ work that has been previously published in the archives of the website. Then he publishes the newest work to the front page of the site. He feels that it gets the students excited about their work since they know it is reaching people outside of their classroom.

I would really love to do this with my Kindergarten class, even if it is just scanning their best written work and making it available to read online. I think it is an easy way to get the kids excited about their work and anything that will get them excited about writing is something I am on board with. I liked how this article was structured. I think it was a nice way to read up on the subject. It was written by a teacher and he really put forth the effort to explain the process which is important. So many times I hear ideas and I think how this could possibly work in my classroom. It is nice that Mr. Coulter took the time to outline his process for having the students publish their work to the Web so us readers can figure out ways we can fit it into our classroom as well.