Blogging Vocab

Last year Karl wisely advised me not to use blogs to add work to my classes, but rather to adapt existing assignments and activities that might fit into the blogosphere. In that spirit, I'm having my English 10 students use the class blog to post vocabulary words. I have a requirement that, in the course of their reading or perusing other media, they each find one new word a week. They post the word, the original sentence in which it appeared, the source, and a definition written in their own words. They're also required to post a word that hasn't already been posted, so they have to read the previous posts, and if they all learn the word "mitosis" in biology that week, only the fastest student can use that word. Once the words are posted, we can use them to generate a vocabulary list for the class, or, better yet, have each student choose X number of words to add to his/her personal vocabulary.

It occurred to me there might be other occasions when I want students each to generate a unique idea, and having them post it on the blog could prevent me from getting a parade of repetitive answers to a writing prompt.