CoveritLive writing

A few years ago, during some of my blogging training, David Mitchell (@DeputyMitchell) introduced me to a fantastic tool called CoveritLive. It allows you to create live blogging sessions and is a great way for children to practise their descriptive writing, their editing and their critiquing skills. This is how it works.

After setting up a free account, you create your event and are given an embed code to paste into your blog. When ready, you press launch event on the CoveritLive event and children are then able to write on the blog. It's like an instant messaging blog post but with everything being moderated by you on the CoveritLive event page. The event page is where I type messages to the children, add images, etc.



Today, as a practise, we used it just within the class. I dragged an image onto the live chat (I had already saved it as an image in the media file) and invited half the class to write a descriptive sentence about it. I had chosen an image of Antarctica to link with our work on Shackleton's Journey. The other half of the class had to give constructive criticism to their peers, who then had to improve their sentence using their feedback and re-post it.

Here is an example from today:

 Comment From James Luca
The astonishing purple sky covered the frosty landscape.

Comment From Dylan and Lucy
we liked the word astonishing but try to describe purple

Comment From James Luca
The aura of the royal purple sky covered the frosty landscape like a duvet.

Comment From Dylan and Lucy
wow! that was perfect try a different sentence



This is obviously one of the most successful pieces of feedback and response! They were very excited about using this - I had to remind them that it wasn't a group chat and I had to ban text speak! Overall, it went well for their first time.

After half of the class had written, I added a second image and they swapped roles. We ended with a final image where everyone could write and feedback as they wished. 

I really love using this as a tool. Firstly, the children are engaged - they love the immediate focused feedback from their peers and they act on it. They can also see what everyone else has written and so are being exposed to all of the language and nuances their peers are using, all of which is available to magpie. They are also made aware of how often they forget capital letters and full stops, especially when they write on the blog (or is that just my class?) - their friends soon point it out! It also made me realise that we desperately need to go over 'our' and 'are' again...

You can see the entire thing on my class blog here: http://stwilliamsblogs.net/6h2017/2017/11/05/cover-it-live/

It shows every interaction so be warned! They were very excited, and also very impatient at times! We only practised writing individual sentences for today but longer pieces will be attempted next time. I also used it to do a quick survey on this week's Circle Time activity, in case you see it!

I always do a practice run with my class before we link up with another one. The excitement levels always go up when we link with another school but it makes them raise their game too! Let me know if you're interested in linking up and we can host. It's the perfect way to see it in action before trying your own event. 

Also, get in touch if you want more information. Enjoy!


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