Vocab Quizzes Via Blogs

So you are ready to start giving your vocab quizzes online? Here's one way of going about it.

I dictate my vocab quizzes. Doesn't matter if I'm teaching Latin I or AP Vergil, all vocab quizzes are dictated. So I read the word in Latin and the student must type the proper spelling of the word and supply the English definition. This is easy enough to do on paper, and it's sure enough easy to do via a blog as well.

First, you will need to set up your class so that each student has their own personal blog. It's up to you if students can see, read, and comment on each others blogs or if they are private and meant primarily as a place to take tests and quizzes. You can easily have the students set up one blog for public view and one blog as an online 'notebook' where they will post work to be graded. One way or another, it's easily done.

Now for the quiz itself.

I have the students prepare a new blog post. As I read the vocab words, they copy them and write the proper translation (okay, so 'ideally' they write the proper translation...).

When I call 'time', the students post their blogs. This supplies the post with a timestamp. Should a Catilinesque pupil attempt to change any of their work after I've called 'time', the timestamp will reflect this and the student will forfeit his or her grade.

Second step is to let students grade their own work. We use Wheelock in class, so the students just have to open their books to the vocab list and check their work against the printed definitions. They then post a comment to their original quiz post. In this comment, they supply correct spelling and definitions for any words they missed and they give their score. That way, they cover the words from several angles -- initial hearing of the dictation, visualization of the spelling and recall of the definition, visual check of spelling and definition, and written correction of mistakes. Pedagogically speaking, it's an ownership thing.

Now, just like the original post, the comment contains a timestamp. After class, I go back and browse through each student's blog checking timestamps and accuracy of corrections. My students know that they will forfeit their grade if they make an error in their corrections, so we rarely have an issue there. All-in-all, the students get to approach the material from a variety of means, I manage to grade each quiz in mere seconds, and we both get an ongoing record of progress stored online that I can show to Mom during a parent conference or email to Dad when he's got questions about a grade.