Thursday, January 28, 2010

Guidelines for Student Comments


Watching a teacher setting a class loose to comment online prompted me to come up with some resources to guide students in the art of commenting.  When little or no direction is given, students post comments full of slang, miss-spellings and humour that may be misunderstood or offensive.

In short, student comments should:

  • be succinct
  • stay on topic
  • extend the conversation
  • be polite, respectful
Students should remember:
  • your first comment of someone's blog is like meeting a stranger
  • using slang may confuse or offend
  • your comment is a reflection on you, your school, your community
Online Resources:


New York Times - The Learning Network - Lesson Plan

Give your students commenting practice or post your class blog to invite comments from others

Jan Smith's class commenting guidelines

Sue Water's The Edublogger 

Kim Cofino's

I'm adding Silvia Tolisano's Blogging Lesson Plan thanks to a comment left by Alex, below.

If you know of any other useful resources please leave a comment!

2 comments:

Alex Francisco said...

Hi Lesley

There are still a lot of us out there that find it hard to manage kids' comments (me included). So, thank you for sharing your input on this subject, as well as some really great resources. If I may, I'd like to add Silvia Tolisano's Blogging Unit: http://langwitches.org/blog/2008/12/23/blogging-with-elementary-school-students/
This link will take you to her post and after you read it, you may consider downloading, for free, her whole blogging unit. I did. ;)

MrsE said...

Thanks for the link Alex, Silvia is an awesome educator!