Many of you know that, in addition to coaching, one of my biggest passions is homeschooling. (In fact, one of my clients told me recently that I am homeschooling adults, which delighted me.) Our 12-year-old son, Max, keeps a blog and learning journal for the past few years. He enjoys doing it—for the most part—and I believe there are so many benefits to writing regularly and engaging with the material in a thoughtful manner.
I’ve cobbled together some ideas for fun blog posts to use with your own students, whether you are teaching at home or in a regular school setting. These are great for kids but can work for adults looking for blogging topics.
Deleted Scenes
Have your students write a deleted scene from their favorite book or movie. Make sure you talk about the difference between writing in scene and in summary. Many students should be able to recognize the “voice” of the narrator and try to emulate it. Every student attempting this feat should have an understanding of how conflict works in a story. For a twist, try writing some bloopers. Ambitious students may want to write a script of this scene. Even more ambitious students with some technical savvy might try acting this out with a few friends.
Adaptation
Take a book and adapt it for the stage or film. This project is not for the faint-hearted, but is a great project for those who want to explore the difference between scripts and novels. (Interiority. And length.) For a bonus round, put on a production, film it and put it on YouTube, embedding it in your blog.
Movie versus Book
It’s always an engaging task for students to compare books to the movies based on them. My son also enjoys comparing books to movies and books to books, which is great prep for doing comparative studies, which are all the rage in graduate school. He’s really gotten into the Odyssey and keeps picking up cartoon versions and comparing them. Who knew there were so many cartoon versions floating around of this classic?
Thumbs Up or Down
These can be reviews on a book, documentary, play or field trip. My son says this is his favorite type of blog entry, because he likes to be able to “be funny” and make recommendations to other people.
Inside Scoop
Have your students pen a journal or diary entry of a national event, with a personal perspective. For example, my son is writing about the floods in Boulder, incorporating his personal story with what happened in the region. He is looking at water in the region and why the floods had so much power. Flood mitigation efforts in Boulder that helped protect us somewhat has caught his interest. He also has been interested in some historical flooding. This type of project works has a strong personal essay component, as well as requires the student to do some research to contextualize their experiences. Older students will benefit from writing in scenes and learning the structure of story.
Current Events
In this version, kids can choose a current event and see how different news organizations cover it. They can also do further research. For example, when Richard the III body was exhumed, my son and I read several news articles on it, watched a mini documentary, and discussed how historians and scientists identify how old something is. We did a little reading on DNA research to further our understanding. Along the way, we also talked about how Shakespeare may have portrayed Richard III more negatively than he was in real life and discussed how history is written by the victors. We even read a story on and watched a documentary about a nearby inn that Richard III slept in before battle. An architect had discovered vintage renderings and had reconstructed it as a three-dimensional model using a 3-D printer. Then Max wrote a post about his findings and what was most interesting.
How To, Serious Edition
The first time you do this assignment, have your students write a serious essay based on how to do something, be it changing a flat tire or setting up your own Minecraft server. Having them pick a topic base on their personal expertise makes this blog challenge more interesting and gives them a sense of accomplishment. Have them take photos or illustrate the process. This challenge helps them learn how to write with an understanding of chronological order or processes that build in logical steps.
How To, Humorous Edition
Once you have the serious one out of the way, have them think of something silly, that is virtually impossible or fantastical, to write a how-to on. Think of “How to Train Your Dragon,” as an example. First have them brainstorm things they would not want to do or wouldn’t need to do. If you are short on brainstorming time and have a large group, “How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse” is a popular starting point. Other possibilities that we’ve had fun with include: “How to Get a Job, Even Though You Are a Child,” “How to Celebrate Christmas in July,” “How to Be Small-Town Superhero,” “How to Reprogram Your Parents” or “How to Date a Martian” or, perhaps, “How to Build a Time Machine.” You get the picture.
Top Ten List
Have your students list the top ten interesting facts or tidbits about any given topic, including famous people, historical events and so on. Older students will enjoy getting more specific and writing with wit and a stronger voice, such as “The Top Ten Wrong Places in the Wrong Time” or “The Top Ten Insanely Power-Hungry Political Leaders.”
A Few of my Favorite Things
Play the song by the same title from The Sound of Music. Have your students list a few of their favorite things. Encourage them to list not only concrete possessions, such as their toys, but other “things” that make them happy in the everyday world. Have them draw them or photograph these favorite things and catalog them on their website. More advanced students might want to rewrite the lyrics to the song and either simply post them on the web or even record themselves singing it. Have them watch Weird Al for inspiration.
The Big Interview
Real-life bloggers do this all the time—have your students pick somebody to interview. It can be somebody in their family or somebody famous. They might even be able to do an interview with their favorite author or musician. (This could happen.) Help them prep by learning how to ask interesting questions and being prepared to ask follow-up questions. This is a good time to discuss whether this will be a written Q & A or if your student wants to do an audio or video interview. Technical support: They’ll need Skype or some screencasting software, such as Jing, which is free, or Camtasia, which is expensive. Audicity, which is free, is great for voice interviews
Inside the Character’s Studio
Have your students look up the Proust questionnaire, which is used in the show Inside the Actor’s Studio, and draw on it to “interview” their favorite character from a book or movie. This exercise can also be extended for students to use in making up their own characters.
Casting a Story Spell
I know my son and his friends all enjoy writing stories based on their spelling words, and it’s a challenge to use all the words in a way that makes sense. As a variation, have your students write a poem. This is a good exercise to loosen up the writing brain, especially for those who let self-criticism or fear of a blank page hold them back. Some of my adult clients have read these stories and have done their own.
Word Smithery
Then have your students go through magazines and books and find words that appeal to them. Have them copy them down, or cut them out, and draw them at random to use in poetry.
Tips for Time Travelers
Read a few roundup travel articles or restaurant reviews from magazines or blogs. Have your students write a parody of a particular time and place in the style of a magazine review for their blog posts, playing it straight. Ambitious or older students might want to do some Photoshopping or drawing of time-traveling tourists in photos or paintings/drawings from ancient places. They can even rate some places. If they add some fictional or humorous elements, this will lead to a discussion of what historians do and what humor and fiction writers do.
Most Influential People
Have students make a list of the influential folks from history, either for all time or for a given historical era. Have them justify their selections in the blog post. This assignment works best if they can give honest opinions and write in their own voice, but it leads to a discussion of who is considered influential and who has relative power. A little research on folks that were once important, but who history has important would make an interesting twist. Older students might benefit from doing something irreverent and humorous, such as “History’s Biggest Fails” or “History’s Snappiest Dressers,” or some such variation. Whether your students play it straight or humorous, they’ll need to do research to justify their lists, find some photos for their posts and think a little like a historian.
Back to the Future
What could be better than pulling an H.G. wells and having your students pen some speculative fiction based on real science principles? For fun, have them read H.G. Wells. Older students might enjoy reading some books by Michael Crichton.
Alien Planet
Have your students watch the documentary Alien Planet (currently on Netflix), in which a group of scientists, including biologists and paleontologists, came up with a faraway planet and populated it with imaginary animals, plants, fungi, viruses and bacteria, based on the actual stats of the planet, such as oxygen levels, temperatures and gravity pull. Then have students come up with their own alien planets and populate them with their own species, that could reasonably survive within the parameters they have set up.
Me, by the Numbers
Have students come up with at least 25 ways they can measure themselves and write a short prose piece or poem. They can take a couple of days to come up with measurements and also search the web for averages. You can have them look at some Harper’s Indexes for ideas. They could also look up the human body by the numbers to see how many times their heart beats per minute, or how much food they consume in a year. Have them brainstorm other ways they live their life by numbers, including addresses, money in their piggy banks, birthdays, phone numbers , number of cousins they have, how many times they had a cold this year, their hat size and so on. As a group exercise, you can have students define some shared numbers (number of pets, siblings, ages of parents, heights) and do a chart for the class.
Problem-O-Matic
Have students come up with serious yet silly story problems to solve, giving them points for creativity. The caveat: the problem must be mathematically solvable and make sense . . . in that sense. More advanced or older students may want to marry movie and genre fiction tropes. For example, if you start out with two zombies invading a town, and each one of them can convert five humans in two days to fellow zombiehood, how many days would it take to turn a town of 500? What happens if we throw guns into the mix. You can turn this into a class challenge: Have students post their problems and offer prizes to the class members who solve the most of their fellow students’ problems in an allotted time.
I’d love to hear your ideas for more fun blog posts. Please post your comments!
