The other day, as our 100-Day Writing Challenge officially began, a student asked me if I would post my writing every day, too. "Since you already write every day, I mean," she shrugged.
"Maybe," I told her, but to be honest, I have long resisted doing just that. For one thing, I don't really want to share everything I write here with my students. Many pieces offer my own private adult perspective on our days spent together, and kind of like teachers talking at lunch, are not always appropriate for kids to overhear.
Likewise, what I might write for a sixth-grade audience may not be of interest to my adult readers, (as few of them as there are!), so I've chosen just to continue on here, rather than write twice. But there was something about the request that made me think again, and so I decided to give posting with those young writers a chance this year.
It's only been three days, but already I've seen some benefits. For one thing, I can model the type of writing we're looking for. Many students write what we call bed-to-bed posts, basically listing everything they do on any given day, rather than focusing on a single thing, or at least a single theme, for each slice of life. Another advantage was when I wrote about the mouse in my classroom the other day. As I was composing I worked to find good "mousy" verbs, and then I was able to use my writing as an example the next day for a mini-lesson on vivid verbs.
But maybe the greatest upside of publishing a couple of hundred words every day on our class site is that my readership has skyrocketed: I've gone from 3-5 daily readers to 50-100! Maybe it's not viral, but it sure is kind of gratifying.
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