Writing to/with Students

Harvey Daniels and I have a lot in common.  We both see great value in writing back and forth with our students, a concept made invaluable by Nancie Atwell.  I, too, tried the responding to everything.  I can vividly remember-- cause it was the last two years--stacking and restacking composition notebooks trying to psych myself into responding.  What I didn't love was how to manage this.  What I did was "reward" the class with the highest participation by giving them the next week off.  However, students who didn't do it were required to make it up.  This way my classes rotated and I only had two classes a week (40-50 students instead of 70-75).  This was still too many.  This year, I tried to change it up.  I made it a more formal critique of what they had read and they were to turn it in upon completing a book --which I expected at least once a month.  This did not work either.  I like the idea of doing five or so a day--I have considered this, but never done it.  Maybe this year, I will try this method.

One way I have considered changing this task is by involving technology.  What if I have students Blog about their reading?  Could that work--keeping an online reading/writing journal?  What do you think?