Commenting Guidelines

Huzzahnians have worked hard to develop the skills and attitudes that help build global connections through commenting. In the slideshow below, Huzzahnians from 2011-12 share their thoughts on commenting. What have we missed? Scroll down below the slideshow to read the excellent advice written by student bloggers through the years.

Guidelines written by the 2010-11 bloggers of Huzzah!

The purpose of commenting is to connect. We comment a lot: on YouTube videos, on blogs, and face to face–pretty much, we comment all the time. We comment to learn, sometimes from people on the other side of the world. We comment to express our opinions about what has been written. We comment to connect, and to connect we tell stories, use humour, and share our thinking. Remember, you are trying to engage the blogger in a conversation! A good comment can be the beginning of a good blogging relationship. Here is our advice on quality commenting:

Think about your digital privacy:

  • Use your first name only to identify yourself.
  • Leave off your home email, your street address, phone number, or school name.
  • Don’t share specifics of your daily routines that involve time and location (ie where & when your soccer practice is)

Think about the tone of your comment:

  • Be polite, friendly, and encouraging.
  • Have some humour, but be careful with sarcasm.
  • If you disagree, don’t be rude about it; give constructive (helpful) feedback.

Think about the content of your comment:

  • Keep your comment on topic and make sense. Say something about the original post.
  • Don’t say random stuff or get really silly.
  • Be more formal than you would in real life, but not stuffy.
  • Avoid texting shortcuts like u for you and l8r for later, and only use one emoticon if you need to.
  • Sometimes add a question at the end to keep the conversation going.
  • Include your blog url (address) so the blogger knows where to find you.

Think about conventions of your comment:

  • Try to fix your spelling mistakes: use Firefox for drafting your  comments.
  • Use capitals in the right places: people’s names, places, the beginning of a sentence, and on “I” —no evil i’s. All capitals is like yelling.
  • Punctuate properly: period at the end of a sentence, space after a period, comma, or end bracket. One “!” will do: you don’t need a string of exclamation marks.
  • Remember, you are putting your best self forward, so polish your comments.
These commenting guidelines were written in early October of 2010. Want more inspiration and guidance for commenting? Check out this post from the Student Blogging Challenge. Time to pump up those mad commenting skilz!

***

Guidelines written by the 2009-2010 bloggers of Huzzah!

Blogging is about reading, thinking, and responding.

Getting a comment can be like receiving a  little bouquet in your mailbox: a treat for the senses.  Division 4 has been taking a lot of time to read posts and write thoughtful comments. Students brainstormed, discussed,  and determined that the points below are important to keep in mind when commenting on blogs.

Guidelines

  • Make your comment worth reading.
  • Start a conversation.
  • Be positive, interested, and encouraging.
  • If you disagree, be polite about it.
  • Connect with the post: be on topic.
  • Re-read your comment before you hit submit–think before you send!
  • Aim for correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
  • Don’t use chat or texting language like lol, i, or u.
  • No “Hi! Visit my blog! Bye!” comments. Be thoughtful.
  • Include your blog url so people can comment back, and use our gmail address, not student webmail.
  • Keep your privacy: no personal or identifying information about you, your family, or your friends. Don’t give out last names, school name, phone numbers, user names, or places and dates you can be found.send me your love Gibsonclaire
Did we miss anything? Let us know what you think.

Image Send me your love by Gibsonclaire

120 comments

  1. Hi!
    This site is really fantastic – thanks for sharing. I’m learning how to blog, and it’s been really helpful to look at how the “professionals” do it!

    1. Hi Emma, welcome to blogging. There is a bit of a steep learning curve initially, but soon you will find yourself ticking along like a pro!
      Best wishes, Jan

  2. Hello, my name is Bekkam
    I think it is important to leave respectful comments to other people in the blogging world.

  3. Hello! I’m starting a blogging project with my high school Algebra 2 Honors students this year and I’m THRILLED to have found your online posting and commenting guidelines! I’m using many of them with my students (with proper credit, of course). Thank you so much!

    1. Go, Mr. Lipp, Go! We are thrilled that you found them useful and grateful that you are giving credit to the student’s work. If you open up your blog for public viewing at some point, please let us know!

  4. Hey! This is GREAT! I hope you don’t mind but I am going to use your advice to help my students. They have all started blogging this year and today and tomorrow they are learning how to comment. Thank you so much!

  5. I really like what you put together guidelines for commenting. May I use your guidelines on my teacher blog? I will be sure to credit you for your guidelines at the bottom of my page.

    Thank you.
    Mrs. C

  6. I love this blog and I’m going to use it as inspiration for my fourth/fifth graders. I am in the beginnings of starting my class blog. I love the Shelfari widget, but don’t have a clue how to add it to my blog. Advice??

    1. Hi there, Teacher Gal,
      Thank you for the compliment. If you’d like to see some terrific blogs closer to your age, take a look at my sidebar for several blogs under Local Blogs–it’s great to see what other people are doing to think about what might work for your situation.
      If you have a Shelfari account, go to your shelf, and click “put your shelf on your blog”. Then copy the html code that shows up and put it a text widget in your sidebar. If all that is Greek, I suggest following The Edublogger where you’ll find all the tips you need, with turtorials, to get going.
      Good luck,
      ~Jan

      1. Thank you for your suggestion to check out other blogs. There are so many talented teachers out there. Where do you all find the time? I’m going to work on my first post today. I am going to take a video of my class working out “The Locker Problem.” You’ll have to check it out!
        As far as the Shelfari tutorial…it doesn’t sound Greek until you get to adding the html code to a text widget. I’ve added widgets to my blogspot account but I don’t see where to paste a html link in the widget link.
        Thanks again for all your support and inspiration.
        ~Alethea

        1. Hi Alethea, try this from your Edublogs dashboard: Appearance > widgets > drag a text box to your sidebar > open > paste the code > save. If you want to see a teacher working with the same theme, look at Hey, Kids!. You’ll begin to see some of the possibilities. Good luck with your blog!
          ~ Ms. Smith

    1. Hi there, thanks for the compliment! If you do use these guidelines, please link back to this page as it’s a positive pat to give students credit for their work. The process of having your students write their own guidelines is powerful learning, too.

  7. What a great blog. I’m currently researching to get ideas and helpful hints before I start blogging with my own grade. Your site is inspiring and I will certainly be back to visit again.
    Thanks for your great advice!

  8. Thank you so much from this “Newbie” … just given a 6/7 so time to get on board! Well… I know what my nights will look like come September.. thanks for the springboard.

  9. Thankyou so much for posting this, it really helped me alot. I especially liked the powerpoint you embed as it was a smart way to keep your readers interested

    Emme

  10. Hey Mrs. S I saw your video it helped me a lot. I agree with the punctuation ad grammar that you talked about.

  11. It’s really cool that you are helping people out with blogging. Personally I am really bad at commenting and stuff but, this is really helping me and is fun.
    -Dakota

  12. Greetings.
    You and the students did a wonderful job of explaining how to comment. I like the different ways that you shared the information. The lists are helpful. I’m a visual learner so the video appealed to me the most. Perhaps your students could consider making a podcast for the auditory learners.

    Thanks for sharing.
    Dinah

    P.S. I fed Fang.

  13. Hi, my name is Jeremy,
    These guidelines is really helpful to know how to comment in a great way. Whenever on websites I try to comment and it is very difficult for me. Being able to read this helps explain and I wanted to say thanks. My url is http://jeremyblye.edublogs.org/.

  14. Thank you for sharing these guidelines. These are very useful and will come in handy for my class. I like the fact you address no “text” talk and focusing on being polite, even if one does not agree. Awesome resource.

  15. These guidelines are clear and effectively set up – I’ll develop my own for my college-level class using these ideas as a basis. Thanks for sharing!

  16. Hey my name is Sofia
    These guidelines really helped me understand what I could do better to make my comments better. It gives good advice on what to do and what not to do. I’m a little sarcastic so the guidelines helped on letting me know that I shouldn’t leave sarcastic comments. Thanks for the guidelines. My URL is https://sofia0520.edublogs.org/

  17. Hi,
    I am from the student blogging challenge. I believe the most important commenting guideline is to stay on topic. It is good to stay on topic everywhere, but when your posting a comment about random things like stuffed animals when the post is about your new avatar that is kind of weird. I read Ben’s blog. His blog was a story about his fictional Mr. Flankin. I thought the story was well written and interesting. He used a lot of good adjectives to enhance the narrative.

    http://www.erikstemblog.blogspot.com

  18. Hi Huzzahians! I love your commenting guidelines, and would love to use them as a starting point for my own students. Would it be ok with you if I did that? I’ll give you credit!

  19. Thanks for all your work on Huzzah! It’s inspiring! I’m a blog beginner and your blog is giving me confidence that I can, and will manage to get a great blog going with my students! ‘We are the Champions!’ is our class theme song, perhaps that should be the name of our blog too!

    Like the last commenter, I especially like the Guidelines for commenting and the slideshow and would like to use them, giving your students credit, to show my students what has come from the understanding of others their age, not just from their own teacher. Many thanks.

    1. Hi Fiona,
      We are the Champions is a great title for your class blog! I wish you luck with this endeavor: although it’s a lot of work initially, I think it pays great dividends. Yes, you are welcome to use these guidelines. We really appreciate you asking.
      Best wishes,
      Jan

  20. Hi! Greetings!
    What a fantastic blog with great ideas. I’m starting on blogging with my students and I think I might use you as inspiration! Is that OK for you?!
    I think your guidelines on how to comment are quite clear, practical and helpful.
    If you want to pay a visit to our class blog and read what we have done in class, this is the URL: http://englishclassspg.blogspot.pt/p/blogging-tips.html
    Thanks for sharing!
    Maria

    1. Hello Maria, greetings to you!
      Thank you for your kind words. You are off to a great start with your blog. I will add it to our sidebar so my students can join in on the conversation there.
      Best wishes,
      Jan Smith

  21. hey guys! I’m a student blogger who lives in West Africa, and if you want to check out my blogging attempts, click here. I love the format of this blog- simple and easy to figure out, especially for someone who is very new to blogging. keep it up!

  22. Hi!

    I am learning about blogging and am planning to introduce it to my sixth graders pretty soon. I really liked many of the elements of your blog-especially your blogging guidelines. Would it be okay with you if I borrowed/adapted them for my blog? They were so clear, easy to understand and helpful.

    Many thanks!
    Stacy Martin

    1. Thanks for asking, Stacy. Yes, please go ahead. If you could link back to the post, I know my students would appreciate it.
      Good luck in blogging!
      Cheers,
      Jan

  23. Hello my name is Mariama,
    Thank you so much for posting these guidelines. They are really helpful. And I hope you won’t mind me using some of them. I will be sure to credit your hard work on my blog, and also leave a link to this amazing blog.

    Thanks again
    Mariama

    1. Hi Mariama,
      Thank you very much for visiting and for your kind compliment. I appreciate your request to share my student’s commenting guidelines, and thank you so much for the credit. I will include your blog url here so others can find your brand new blog :Mariama’s blog Happy blogging!
      Ms. Smith

  24. Hi My name is Brandon, I really liked you blog because it helped me by doing what I’m doing know, commenting. I hope you have a nice day, bye.

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