Instructional Blogging: Promoting Vocabulary and Text Comprehension through student-centered interactivity

Cognitive processing problem-solving learning tasks is one research based method that challenges the basics approach method with a focus on complex meaningful high level tasks which emphasizes teaching modeling, making connections with students’ out-of school experience and culture, uses dialogue as a central teaching strategy and provides teacher scaffolding ( Hamel & Smith, 1998; Ashman & Conway, 1993; Silberman et al, 1993). Instructional blogging, can support self question and answer content reviews and support students’ effort to comprehend texts, by engaging in the conscious use of attempting to understand what they read (Neufield: 304) through sustained interaction with vocabulary, written text and comprehension.

As a receptive learning tool, blogging can be used to frame assignments within a theoretical context that encourages students to acquire information and report on what they have learnt. Blogs can also be used to simulate Getting-Ready-to-Read Strategies which clarifies the reading purpose, overviews the constructed text, activates prior knowledge and make text predictions through a series of critical how, what and why questions that form hypotheses about the content of the text. Blogs have the potential for use as a During- and After-Reading Strategy by encouraging guided discovery and knowledge construction which may help struggling readers understand and remember what they have read and help them self-monitor their comprehension.