This blog will serve to exhibit the best and brightest posts from my student’s personal blogs.  I am starting this project to allow students to have their own voice when discussing the books they love.  I couldn’t put it more eloquently than another teacher who I researched when creating this assignment.  He says:

Why Blogs?
This unit is all about empowering students by providing freedom. The blogs add a maker mentality, stirring the imagination to create, design, and tinker. No longer must they be told what to write and how, submitting to another’s power and authority. Blogs provide choice and independence, allowing them to own the learning experience.

They also add a dimension that essay writing or journaling can never match: expansion. Once students publish a post, their writing passes the four walls of the classroom and exists to the world. This puts their work “out there,” and that changes how they approach their writing. No longer just about impressing the teacher, their writing exists unto a larger audience — classmates, friends, and the blogosphere — whom they seek to wow.-Brian Sztabnik