Blogging in Ancient Rome
Last year, when we moved our sixth graders from our lower- school campus to our upper-school campus, we took the opportunity to tinker with the curriculum and
explore opportunities for collaboration and innovation among a new
group of teachers. One of the projects
born from the new configuration
integrated history, literature, and an
exploratory Latin program that focused on the culture of ancient Rome.
The project began with the historical fiction novel The Thieves of Ostia
by Caroline Lawrence, which students
read aloud in Latin class on Fridays.
The students enjoyed the story so
much that they were reading ahead at
home. That led us to brainstorm ways
to build on student interest in the
content by integrating technology.
First we introduced the idea of blogs
to students and told them that we
would be writing from the perspective
of the novel’s characters. We used the
blogging platform Kidblog (kidblog.
org) because it’s secure and doesn’t require students to create their own accounts. Kidblog gives the teacher full
control to approve all posts and comments so there is little risk of students
publishing inappropriate content. Because we would be asking students to
comment and react to each other, this
was an important consideration.
Before allowing students to dive in,
we taught them about blogs—what
they are, why there are different types
of blogs, and how to maintain privacy
and stay safe online.
With this overview fresh in their
minds, we assigned all students a character from the novel. We gave the stronger writers characters that required more
imagination, such as the part of the dog
or a mute child, and weaker writers the
main characters, who were easier to represent. The teachers of each class took on
the role of a herald.
In their history class, students researched the culture at the time of
the novel. For homework, students
learned about the food, dress, and
habitat of the time period so that the
characters would have historical tidbits to share within their blog posts.
Back in Latin class, students studied
and designed signet rings to represent
their assigned characters. Using iPads,
students took pictures of their hand-drawn designs on pre-cut ovals of
construction paper. They uploaded the
images to accompany their first blog
posts, which offered biographical information and related historical details revealed in their homework. Throughout
the project, we required students to use
formal writing and avoid text-speak.
As an additional piece, we took the
map that appears in the novel and
enlarged it to poster size. The students
then had to place their signets on
the map to indicate where they were
in the city. They didn’t know why
they were doing this, but later, we
introduced events for the students to
react to in their writing. Their location became important because it affected what happened to them. Events
included a fire in the granary and a
pirate invasion in the harbor.
Once the first biographical posts
went live, we asked students to comment constructively in character to
at least two other blog posts. Initially,
the comments were mostly vague and
not very thought provoking. But after
