I have given out my cell number to parents every year that I've taught. To some, this sounds insane. But I love being able to communicate via text, since it's an easier medium for many parents than email. I didn't think much of so many people having my number. However, after an incident with a parent last year, I've been thinking of ways that I could still give out my number but have a little privacy protection.

Enter Google Voice. It allows you to set up a free...yes, totally FREE...phone number that will forward to your cell phone.  You hand out your Google Voice number to parents, which they can text or call like any number. It will forward the messages or calls to your phone , which you would answer like any regular text or call.  It works differently (and likely easier and more natively) on android phones; but on the iPhone, texts show up in my messages tab. 

It is fairly simple and intutive to set up a  number...after all, it is Google! If you get stuck, though, there are many videos on their Google Voice channel about setting up basic and advanced features. You can acccess their channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfBh8e6S55uXSQGIC50xPpw
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Yes, you can stick with giving parents your work number. For many, that may be an easier and more comfortable option. However, I think the extra features you get with something like Google Voice make it worth the small bit of effort!

1. Give Interesting Topics
I use writingprompts.tumblr.com  and  photoprompts.tumblr.com t to find interesting topics. Occasionally, I relate it to holidays or topics in other classes. Right before winter break, the students wrote about this topic. Last week, as a prelude to Valentine's Day, they wrote about this topic.  I use Google Slides to post the topic at the beginning of the week, and I explain and answer any clarifying questions before they begin writing.

2.  Explain Expectations
Students need to know what you expect out of their blog posts, and they should be reminded of it often. I remind them daily of the main things I will be looking for in a complete blog post--at least 8-10 sentences, good grammar and spelling, interesting to read, introduction, conclusion. These reminders reinforce my expectations over and over, so that students know exactly what I want their blog posts to look like. I also remind them that they need to be logged in as soon as the bell rings and writing until our 10 minutes is up. I make sure this happens by walking around the room and checking in with them while they work.  I try to verbally recognize kids who start writing quickly. 

3. Tiered Editing
I'm not an English teacher and never have been, so editing was a new process for me.  I knew that I wanted to be purposeful about how they were grouped. After the first round of grading their blogs, I created tier editing groups of students who were near each other in skill level. The students with the lowest scores worked one on one with me.  On the first day, I was nervous that students would be off task or not productive. I was so wrong! The students were very focused, and the editing that they accomplished was very productive. Some students swapped iPads and edited each other's work silently, while other students preferred to work together and edit one blog at a time. I created a checklist that they go over together, which you can see below.

They became excellent moderators! It has a dual purpose of being an extension activity for my top bloggers, as well as better moderation than I was providing.  They leave lots of positive comments, gently remind other students of the guidelines, and screenshot anything inappropriate to send to me. 

5. Reflective Grading
We use the state writing assessment rubric  to grade their work. It's a very intensive rubric. At the beginning of the year, we went through all the categories and explained what each category meant. The editing checklist they use is correlated to the same categories as the rubric.

At the beginning of the year, I graded the students' blogs and wrote comments for each of them. However, since I have 320 students, it was an extremely daunting and time-consuming task! I wanted to be able to grade their blogs once a month, and that wasn't feasible. I also wanted them to be able to reflect on their writing and evaluate it. ​​ I started having them grade their own blogs using the rubric, which we go through as a class. I go over the grade they gave themselves later to see if I agree.