VOCABULARY:

Shared reading: Used when teachers read aloud books to class that are above independent reading level but still spark interest. 5 stages of the reading process are used. After the book has been read multiple times teachers use the book to teach high frequency words and phonics. 

•  K-3 sit together on the carpet during their shared reading time. Drawing students’ attention should be a natural part of shared reading. Ways to keep students engaged is by asking questions, allowing comments, and prompting students to think about concepts she demonstrates such as pointing out letters, words, punctuation marks, modeling strategies, and asking questions about the concepts of print. 

Interactive Writing: When teacher and students create text together. Teacher provides a guide for students to follow and the class works together to create the message. Students take turns during interactive writing. The message students work together on is on white board in front of the whole class while students are simultaneously writing the message in their notes. 

• Concepts about print, letter-sound relationships and spelling patterns, handwriting, capitalization, and punctuation are learned through interactive writing. 

Choral Reading: Students share the work by taking turns reading

Guided Reading: Teacher does most of the reading, but students chime in to read familiar and predictable words and phrases.

Word Wall: Filled with high frequency words 

• Each letter of the alphabet has an area where words that start with that letter are.

WW_2_master.jpg

Mini Lessons: after a lesson, students are given strategies and skills to apply what they learned. They then take part in activities that help them apply the concepts.

Interactive Read Aloud: When teacher reads aloud a book of the week, one that pertains to what students are learning, or any other book. Interactive read alouds help teach predicting, visualizing, and other reading strategies. After the read aloud is over the class and teacher have a grand conversation.

Concepts of Print: Children’s understanding that print has meaning, words have meaning, etc.

• Concepts about print can be taught by:
  • Posting signs in the classroom
  • Making a list of classroom rules
  • Using reading and writing materials in literacy play centers
  • Exchanging messages with classmates
  • Reading and writing stories
  • Labeling classroom items
  • Drawing and writing in journals
  • Writing notes to parents
• Children are also leaning directionality concepts 

Concepts of Words: 4 stages of word consciousness

1. Knowing no difference between words and things
2. Words do stand for things
3. Words carry meaning, stories are built from words
4. Words have a meaning of their own and can be spoken, or written

• Children develop these skills through literacy activities (Shared Reading)

Concepts of the alphabet: Understanding that letters represent sounds (phonemes)

• Components:
  • Letters name
  • Knowing both uppercase and lowercase of letters
  • Features of a letter distinguish it from other letters
  • Direction letter is turned distinguishes it from other letters
  • Use of the letter and its sound
  • Sound the letter represents in isolation
  • Sound letter represents in combo with others (ch, sh, th)
  • Sound letter makes in context of words (cot, chair, city)

Environmental Print: Print that children recognize without even reading it. Example: store logos, brand logos, food logos, cereal boxes, restaurant logos

Assessing Concepts of Written Language: Assessment can be done through daily observations, CAP test (Concepts about Print), testing directionality, etc.

Reading and Writing Development Stages:

• Stage 1: Emergent Reading and Writing: When children start understanding that print has a communicative purpose and when they first develop an interest in reading and writing. They start to notice environmental print and start to develop concepts of print as teacher continues to read and write with them
  • Children accomplish:
    • Develop an interest in reading and writing
    • Acquire concepts of print
    • Develop book-handling skills
    • Learn to identify letters of the alphabet
    • Develop handwriting skills
    • Learn to read and write some high frequency words
  • Children are usually emergent readers during Kindergarten
• Stage 2: Beginning Reading and Writing: child grows awareness of alphabetic principle. Children learn more about grapheme-phoneme correspondence, phonic rules, word families.
  • Children Accomplish:
    • Learn phonic skills
    • Recognize 100 high frequency words
    • Can apply reading strategies including cross-checking, predicting, and repairing
    • Can write 5+ sentences, sometimes organized into paragraphs
    • Spell phonetically
    • Spell 50 high frequency words
    • Use capital letter at beginning of sentence
    • Use punctuation at end of sentence
    • Reread their writing
• Stage 3: Fluent Reading and Writing: Students can now recognize 100’s of words automatically and can identify unfamiliar words when reading. Fluent readers and writers use the writing process to draft, revise, and publish their writing. They are familiar with many genres of writing and can use conventional spelling and other written language conventions.

Revising Groups: When students use the writing process to revise and edit their writing, they are in revising groups. They share their writing with classmates in their group seeking recommendations on how to revise and improve their writing.

Morning Message: A literacy activity done daily by some teachers. Teachers will form a message on chart paper explaining what the plan is for that day and what they can expect. Each student will have a morning message on their desk when they arrive. They read that message as a class at the beginning of the day and then count the words, letters, sentences. After that, they identify familiar words, punctuation, high frequency words, or a particular phonics pattern. Some teachers will have a fill in the blank morning message where students add the prompted word/phrase.

Predictable Books: Books that have repeated sentences, rhyme, or other patterns.

• Repetition: Author repeats sentences in a predictable pattern
• Cumulative Sequence: Sentences are repeated and expanded throughout episodes of the book
• Rhyme and Rhythm: Adds a music quality
• Sequential Patterns: Months of the year, number 1 to 10, letters, etc.

Language Experience Approach: Uses shared writing where the teacher has student talk about experience and decide what they want to “write” about. The teacher writes down exactly what the student says. Once the text is completed the student is able to read the material since it is based on their own experiences and ideas. 

Interactive Writing: “sharing the pen”, teacher and students share the writing. The class all interactively takes turns writing the text in front of the class with the teachers assistance.

Manuscript Handwriting: All children enter school with different background. Some come to school not knowing how to write at all while others can write their names and a few other letters. Developing handwriting skills starts off as simple as how to hold a pencil, then learning how to write each letter with brief directions from teachers. Some teachers will sing a tune  and some will model how to write letters. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy Video: 

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: This chapter gave so much information about how to write learning objectives and what objectives might look like. It also gave a good look at what learning the simplest things looks like through the eyes of a child. It is important for teachers to remember that each child comes to school with a different amount of experience and background knowledge on how to write, read, etc.

VOCAB:

Running Record: Monitoring students ability to recognize high frequency words, decode unfamiliar words, and use reading strategies.  

• This could be done while students are reading familiar books 

• Running records can be used to determine reading level 

runrec.gif 

Minilessons: Bringing attention and awareness to high frequency words, phonetic features of words, & capitalization/punctuation based on sentences of the week. 

Book Talk: Teasers teachers use to introduce certain books to students to hook their interest. 

-1^st the teacher shows the book 

-2^nd teacher summarizes the story without giving away the ending 

-3^rd teacher passes the book off to a student who is interested or puts it in the classroom library 

4 steps of assessment:  

–Step 1: Planning for assessment 

-planning for assessment happens at the same time as instruction planning 

-Questions to consider: 

-Do students have adequate background knowledge and vocab about topic to be taught? 

-Are any students struggling? 

-Are students completing assignments? 

-Are students showing good work habits? 

-Do students work responsibly together? 

-Have students learned concepts? 

-Can students apply what they’ve learned in authentic literacy projects? 

–Step 2: Monitoring Students’ Progress: 

-This step is VITAL 

-This is when teachers monitor their students learning on a day to day basis and use results to make instructional decisions. 

–Observations: “kid watcher”, focusing on what students are doing as they read or write. Focus is on literacy, not behavior 

–Anecdotal Notes: When teachers write brief notes as they observe students. This can be done with stick notes and a notebook. Assigning each student a page in the notebook and putting the stick notes about them on their page. Notes should describe specific events. These notes monitor and document student’s growth. 

–Conferences: When teacher meets with student 

-On the spot: Teacher visits each students desk, brief 

-Planned: Happens before reading or writing 

-Revising: Small group of students meet with teacher 

-Book discussion 

-Editing: Teacher reviews students composition and makes suggestions 

-Evaluation: Teacher meets with student after assignment 

–Checklists: Lays out what is expected of the student.  

-Book Talks 

–Step 3: Evaluating students’ learning:  

-Assessment is summative 

-Tests or evaluations are on students’ actual reading or writing 

-Students work sample 

–rubrics: Scoring guides to evaluate students performance according to specific criteria & levels of achievement 

-Websites: 

-Rubrics 4 teachers 

-Rubistar 

-Teach-nology 

-6 + 1 traits 

–Multimodal Assessments: More Broad way to asses reading and writing. Teachers should consider, (a)The literacy strategies that students employ, (b) The variety of print and digital texts students read, (c) The digital resources students use, (d) Students ability to collaborate with classmates, (e)The multiple ways students demonstrate learning (oral, written, visual)

–Step 4: Reflecting on Students’ Learning 

-Reflection on instruction and how future instruction can be changed 

-Analyzation of student achievement 

-Students also reflect upon their experience 

(Portfolio) Assessment: A collection of students’ work to help them evaluate their progress and show off their best work. 

-portfolios help both teacher and student to see patterns of growth 

-help students to feel ownership of their work 

-Students feel more responsible for their work 

-Students can set goals and feel motivated to work toward them 

-Students make connection between learning and assessing 

-Teachers use portfolios during parent conferences 

Independent Reading Level: Level where student can recognize almost all words, their reading is fluent, and they are able to comprehend what they are reading. 

-Slightly easier than instructional reading level 

Instructional Reading Level: Student can read with support, not on their own. Can recognize most words, some fluent reading some not. Student can comprehend what they are reading with support from teacher and peers. When reading independently, comprehension is limited. 

Frustration Reading Level: Books that student cannot read successfully or with assistance. Minimum word recognition, reading is choppy and wordy by word. Student shows very little understanding about what they are reading. 

Leveled Books: Books are arranged from easiest to hardest, by a 26-level continuum. 

-Variables considered: 

-Genre and format 

-Organization and use of text structures 

-Familiarity and interest level of context 

-Complexity of ideas 

-Language and literacy features 

-Sentence length and complexity 

-Sophistication of vocab 

-Word length and ease of decoding 

-Relationship of illustrations to the text 

-Length of book 

Lexile Framework: Another way to match books to readers. Two factors: Word familiarity and sentence complexity. Scores range from 100 to 1300. 

-Wide range of levels makes matching reader and book together more specific. 

Informal Reading Inventories: Used to evaluate students’ reading performance. Used for 1^st -8^th grade. Also used to determine whether students are reading at grade level, identify student’s struggles. 

-Two parts: 

-Graded word lists: 10-20 words from easiest to hardest. Student reads until words become too difficult 

-passages: Student reads passage and answers 3 comprehension questions. Teachers have chance to examine comprehension, fluency, vocab knowledge 

Miscue Analysis: Noting words that student is having a hard time reading. When student mispronounces words, it is noted as what the word is and what the student says.  

SOLOM: An authentic tool for assessment, Student Oral Language Observation Matrix, not a test but a rating scale. Teachers use this while EL’s are speaking and listening to track how well they are grasping the English language. 

–Five components of Oral Language: 

-Listening: score from continuum rating from not able to comprehend simple statements to being able to understand everyday conversations.  

-Fluency: scored on continuum from halting, fragmentary speech to fluent. 

-Vocabulary :Scored on continuum from extremely limited word knowledge to using words and idioms skillfully.  

-Pronunciation: Scored on continuum from unintelligible speech to using pronunciation and intonation proficiently. 

-Grammar: Scored on continuum from excessive errors to being able to apply word order, grammar, and usage rules effectively. 

-Each component has 5-point range making maximum score 25. A score 20 or higher signifies that the student is fluent 

KWL Charts: A way for teachers to identify what ELL’s know (their background knowledge) before teaching. Before instruction the first two sections are filled out. After the lesson, once new vocab/concepts are introduced, the third section is completed. 

kwl-1.jpg 

Test Taking Strategies: Students learn these strategies and are able to choose which ones best apply to each test they take. Most standardized tests are multiple choice. 

-Read Entire Question First: This is so students fully understand what is being asked. With reading passages, questions should still be answered first so that students know what to look for when they are reading. 

-Look For Key Words in The Question: Key words such as compare, except, and authors intent are a good guide as to what to pay attention to. 

-Read all Answer Choices Before Choosing the Correct Answer: After reading the question, students should think of the answer first, then read the choices. They can then eliminate answers they know are not correct. 

-Answer Easier Questions First: Skip the difficult ones and come back to them after the tough ones. 

-Make Smart Guesses: This is done by eliminating unlikely answers and using process of elimination keeping in mind what the question is asking and what they have learned about that topic. 

-Stick With Your First Answer: Students should never second guess themselves. 

-Pace Yourself: Students should budget their time so that they do not spend too long on a question and run out of time. 

-Check Your Work Carefully: Make sure all questions are answered.  

High Stakes Testing: Designed to measure students’ knowledge according to grade level standards.  

-Problems with high stake testing:  

-Students feel the added pressure 

-Struggling students tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged. Over time student’s motivation will be destroyed. 

-Student drop out dates are rising 

-Teachers feel that they are losing time with of balanced approach instruction because they are too busy preparing for the test. 

Classroom Connection: 

This chapter provided a lot of good information on how to assess student’s reading levels. I particularly took a liking to the running record. I remember when I was young, my teachers would do something like that, and I always wondered what they were marking down, but now I know. I also liked the idea of each student having a page in a notebook for sticky notes regarding what is observed about them.  

Vocabulary:

Reading Process: Goal is to comprehend the text and be able to understand it and use it for its intended purpose.

• Involves essential components:
  • Phonemic Awareness and Phonics
    • Phonics: Relationship between phonemes and graphemes
    • Orally manipulating sounds in words
  • Word ID
    • Words students see frequently and are able to read without much thought. With unfamiliar words, students have to use phonics and word parts to pick apart the word. Until most words are recognizable, students will be word to word readers.
  • Fluency
    • When students are able to recognize most words automatically, they become quicker readers, and are able to focus on their expression rather than identifying each word.
  • Vocabulary
    • Knowing what each word means. This helps with comprehension.
  • Comprehension
    • Understanding what they are reading. Being able to recall what happened.
• Stage 1: Prereading
  • Before even opening the book, the reader gathers background knowledge, grasps the purpose, and makes a plan for reading.
    • Background Knowledge: acquired through life experiences, and knowledge that is needed in order to be able to comprehend the text
  • Students will also take the time to preview the text in this stage.
• Stage 2: Reading
  • During this stage, there are 5 different ways students go about reading the book
    • Teacher reads aloud to students:
      • Interactive Read Aloud: Used for books that are written above reading level but are developmentally appropriate. 
      • During the read aloud students are engaged and making predictions, seeing important big ideas, forming questions, and making connections.
      • The teacher models what good readers do while they read the book
      • Reading aloud has lots of benefits: Vocab introduction, modeling comprehension strategies, and increasing student motivation.
    • Shared Reading: Used when students could not read the text independently. Children see the text as the teacher is reading, allowing them to be more engaged and in tune with the story.The students are able to read along once the book has been read to them a few times. 
    • Guided Reading: Used with groups of 4 or 5 students who all read at the same level. A book is chosen for that group’s reading level that they will be able to read with 90-94% accuracy. Students do the reading themselves. Lessons usually last 25-30 mins. Teachers observe the students as they read during their set aside guided reading time. The teacher is looking for evidence of strategy use and watching for when students attempt to identify words and solve reading problems.
    • Partner Reading
    • Independent Reading
• Stage 3: Responding
  • This stage reflects Rosenblatt’s transactional theory. 
  • Students respond to what they’ve read often times in reading logs or in discussions.
• Stage 4: Exploring
  • Rereading; Students go back and examine the text. This is a more teacher directed stage.
  • Close Reading; Purposeful rereading of the text to understand big ideas, determine authors’ purpose, and reflect on meaning of certain words/phrases. Teachers ask text-based questions for students to think directly back to their book.
  • Examining Writer’s Craft; Teachers share info about the author and share others books they’ve written.
  • Focusing On Words and Sentences; 
    • Word Wall: Where students add important words. The word wall can be referred back to when students are writing.
    • Word Sorts: Categorizing words based on how they are related.
  • Teaching Minilessons; 
    • Minilessons: Introducing topic and making examples in selection of text that students are reading. 
• Stage 5: Applying
  • Students extend their comprehension and reflect on their understanding of the text. 
  • This is when a project is made to show what they’ve learned (stories, slide shows, posters, readers theatre, essays, podcast)
  • Readers Theatre: Students act out their reading. They do not memorize their lines or do any movement, they simply practice reading their text with expression outloud to the class.

Writing Process: 5 stages that describe what students think about as they write.

• Prewriting: “getting ready to write” stage. 
  • Choosing a topic
  • Considering purpose and genre
  • Gathering and Organizing Ideas
• Drafting: Stage where students get their ideas down on paper and get a 1st draft done. Drafts are usually messy with crossing out words, arrows, lines, etc. Students are writing quickly and are not concerned with handwriting, grammar, or spelling.
• Revising: Students are refining their ideas. Reading the draft to peers to get reactions and feedback. Revising consists of 3 activities: Rereading rough draft, Sharing rough draft with revising group, and revising based on feedback.
• Editing: Putting the writing into its final form. This is when spelling and grammar are corrected. This is also when students proofread their writing and mark possible errors.
• Publishing: The final copy! This is when students have the opportunity to publish their writing by making books, reading their story to the class, etc.

Reading Strategies: 

• Decoding: Using phonic or morphemic analysis to pick apart unfamiliar words
• Word- Learning: Analyzing word parts to find the meaning of a word
• Comprehension: Predicting, drawing, inferences, visualizing what is being read to help comprehension and understanding of text. 
• Study: taking good notes and questioning to learn more info when students are reading content area books.

Writing Strategies:

• Prewriting: Organizing and developing ideas before writing begins
• Drafting: Narrowing topic and providing examples to focus on ideas for first draft
• Revising: Detecting problems, elaborating ideas, combining sentences to communicate ideas more effectively. 
• Editing: Proofreading to identify spelling and other mechanical errors
• Publishing: Designing layout to prepare final copies to share with classmates.

Classroom Connection: These 2 processes are going to be taught in most classrooms that I could ever teach in. It is important for me to have a good understanding of each process and the importance of each step within them so I can support my students effectively. Having this blog post to refer back to will be very helpful!

Vocabulary:

Principle 5: Effective Teachers Address Standards

Principle 6: Effective Teachers Scaffold Students’ Reading and Writing

Scaffolding: Demonstrating, guiding, and teaching to provide the right amount of support according to instructional purpose and students’ needs.

• 5 levels of support (from most-least)
  • Modeled
  • Shared
  • Interactive
  • Guided
  • Independent
• Shared Reading: reading big books with young children
• Shared Reading: Teacher does most of the reading while students follow along and chime in to read familiar and predictable words and phrases.
  • Can also be done with older students

• Language Experience Approach (shared): Recording children’s translation of art, reading, etc. 
• Choral Reading (Interactive): Students take turns reading lines of a poem
  • Students are supporting each other by sharing the work 
• Readers Theatre (Interactive): Students take on roles of characters and read the lines of their character
• Interactive Writing (Interactive): Creating a text as a class and writing a message
  • Interactive Writing is used for:
    • Practicing reading and writing high- frequency words
    • Applying phonics and spelling skills
    • Reading and writing texts that students can’t do independently
    • Having students share their literacy exercise with classmates
• Mini Lessons (guided): After teaching a lesson and giving strategies and skills, teachers provide practice activities so students’ can apply what they are learning.
• Guided Reading: With continued support, student’s do all reading themselves
  • Small groups of children at similar reading level meet with the instructor. Instructor guides reading and introduces book.

Principle 7: Effective Teachers Organize for Instruction

Literature Circles: Small groups of students gather to read a story. 

• Teacher begins by choosing 5 or 6 books of varying levels that meet all students’ needs. After an introduction of each book, each group chooses a book to read and discuss
• This helps students develop responsibility for completing a task.

Principle 8: Effective Teachers Differentiate Instruction

Differentiation: Adjusting instruction because students vary in levels of development, achievement, and ability

• Based on Vygotsky’s idea of ZPD.
• One size fits all DOES NOT apply in the classroom
• If instruction is either too hard or too easy, it is not effective
• Differentiation is done by choosing different materials, delivery methods, assignment modification, etc. 
  • Differentiating the Content: Teachers identify info that students need to learn to meet standards.
    Differentiating the Process: Vary instruction and application activities to meets students needs
  • Differentiating the Product: Teachers vary how students present what they’ve learned (Assessments, projects, etc.)

Principle 9: Effective Teachers Link Instruction and Assessment

Nurturing English Language Learners: Having ELL’s participate in mainstream instructional programs

• Teachers Scaffold oral language acquisition and literacy development by:
  • Explicit Instruction: Presenting additional instruction on strategies and skills
  • Oral Language: Teachers provide many opportunities for ELLs to speak English comfortably and informally in partners or small groups to relieve pressure
  • Small Group Work: Teachers provide many opportunities for small group work to support learning with social interaction. 
  • Reading Aloud to Students: Reading all sorts of text aloud to model fluent reading
  • Background Knowledge: Organizing instruction into themes to build students’ literary knowledge through mini lessons 
  • Authentic Literacy Activities: Allowing and providing opportunities for students to apply strategies and skills in real life purposes.

Assessment: Ongoing part of learning and teaching. Daily part of classroom life where teachers collect and analyze data from observations, tests, and conferences to make plan for students’ academic achievement and to plan interventions

• Assessments occur for these puposes:
  • Determining Instructional Levels
  • Monitoring Progress
  • Diagnosing Students’ Strengths and Weaknesses
  • Documenting Learning

Running Records: Used to analyze a students’ ability to solve reading problems while orally reading

Linking Instruction and Assessment:

• Assessment Cycle:
  • Step 1: Planning
  • Step 2: Monitoring
  • Step 3: Evaluating
  • Step 4: Reflecting
• Rubrics: Assesses students’ performances, written products, and multimedia projects

Figure 1-5: Levels of Scaffolding

Figure 1-6: Technology in the Classroom

Figure 1-7: Ways to Differentiate Instruction

Classroom Connection: I found the tables in the second half of Chapter 1 to be very useful. I think they would come in handy in the future to refer back to when needed.

Vocabulary:

Principle 1: Effective Teachers Understand How Students Learn

Behaviorism: Theory that focuses mainly on observable and measurable parts of students’ behavior.

Constructivism: Knowledge is constructed by the learner themselves.

Schema Theory: How students learn

Inquiry Learning: Students are curious; actively, they seek to create their own knowledge.

Engagement Theory: Engaged learners are those who are intrinsically motivated.

Sociolinguistics: Language is used to organize thoughts.

Information Processing: How information moves through processing units as it is stored.

Principle 2: Effective Teachers Support Students’ Use of the Cueing system

Phonological System: English sounds system (Application example: Pronouncing words, dividing words into syllables)

Syntactic System: English structural organization system (Application example: Combining sentences, compound words, punctuation)

Semantic System: Meaning system of English ( Application example: Learning the meaning of words)

Pragmatic System: English system that offers language choices (social & cultural) 

Principle 3: Effective Teachers Create a Community of Learners

Principle 4: Effective Teachers Adopt a Balanced Approach to Instruction

Common Core Standards: Knowledge students are expected to learn at each grade level

Balanced Approach: Instruction that’s based on comprehensive view of literacy

Classroom Application

So far this chapter, a certain concept that was discussed has really stuck with me. The idea that teachers need to understand how students learn in order to be effective makes so much sense to me. Going along with that, I really enjoyed reading about the schema theory.

Vocabulary:

Principle 1: Effective Teachers Understand How Students Learn

Behaviorism: Theory that focuses mainly on observable and measurable parts of students’ behavior.

Constructivism: Knowledge is constructed by the learner themselves.

Schema Theory: How students learn

Inquiry Learning: Students are curious; actively, they seek to create their own knowledge.

Engagement Theory: Engaged learners are those who are intrinsically motivated.

Sociolinguistics: Language is used to organize thoughts.

Information Processing: How information moves through processing units as it is stored.

Principle 2: Effective Teachers Support Students’ Use of the Cueing system

Phonological System: English sounds system (Application example: Pronouncing words, dividing words into syllables)

Syntactic System: English structural organization system (Application example: Combining sentences, compound words, punctuation)

Semantic System: Meaning system of English ( Application example: Learning the meaning of words)

Pragmatic System: English system that offers language choices (social & cultural) 

Principle 3: Effective Teachers Create a Community of Learners

Principle 4: Effective Teachers Adopt a Balanced Approach to Instruction

Common Core Standards: Knowledge students are expected to learn at each grade level

Balanced Approach: Instruction that’s based on comprehensive view of literacy

Classroom Application

So far this chapter, a certain concept that was discussed has really stuck with me. The idea that teachers need to understand how students learn in order to be effective makes so much sense to me. Going along with that, I really enjoyed reading about the schema theory.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.