Blog Reflection Week!

This week is dedicated to looking back on your first four posts and reflecting as a writer.  How can you improve your writing about reading?  This post goes hand in hand with the paper that you will fill out and return to me about what you learned from this experience.

Good blogging habits:

•          Are you crafting interesting titles that make someone want to read your post?

•          Do you mention “spoiler alert” if you are going to give away the ending?

•          Are you remembering to use good grammar: spelling, capitalization, underline or italicize titles, etc.

•          Are you commenting on other people’s blogs? It is now a part of your weekly blogging responsibility to comment at least once a week.  Have a blog roll of people who you want to read on the side of your blog.  Make sure your display name is your first name and last initial so you can get credit.

Good writerly habits:

•          Do you include context so that the reader doesn’t feel like he/she is jumping into something half way through? (context should be 2-3 sentences in the first paragraph and include the title, author, character, setting and conflict)

•          Are you including too much retell? Your blog posts aren’t a review of a book or a blurb on the back cover.  Your post should be focused an interesting idea that you want to unpack and share. 

•         Are your blog posts focused? Concentrate on one idea (a character, a theme, a line, etc.)

•          Are you using paragraphs? At minimum, you should have an “introduction” paragraph, an “observe/infer/interpret” paragraph and an “extension” paragraph.  These show me that you can write for an audience, that you are doing deep thinking work in your book, and that you are seeing how literature relates to life. 

Good examples: Check out these mentors to see what you can learn from them. You will be choosing one to focus on for your next blog post. 

Ana did a great job making her book relateable to her reader, whether they read the book or not.  Notice how she "bookended" her post to get the reader interested and to leave them thinking.

Layla did a great job structuring her post, making me think and now I want to read Fight Club!

Tori shows how to write a post on unpacking a line and does a great job making the reader think!

Gabi's posts are great examples of the Introduction/Observe+Infer+Interpret/Extension structure!

Sophie's posts are passionate and thought provoking.