Who’s Excited For This Week??? This Teacher Is!!!

After a weekend of rest and now that I am feeling healthy I am very excited for this coming school week!

Photo Credit: Lotus Carroll via Compfight cc

I spent a lot of time this weekend looking at my classroom blog and reflecting about what I see when I look at our classroom blog.  I asked myself what have I done so far???

1. I began this journey by starting our Miss Stephanson’s Classroom Blog and each of my students have their own secret agent blog linked onto our blog to showcase their learning.  I also got permission forms back from each family allowing them to participate in the blog! (Insert happy dance!)

2. I created an about our secret agent classroom page.  It gives details about our school, classroom, and about myself professionally.

3. I also added in a blogging guidelines page.   It allows people who look at our blog to know what my expectations are and what the guidelines are when leaving a comment.

4. Finally I created a contact me page.  I thought it would be a good idea to have a contact me page so people can ask questions and get a hold of me privately through e-mail without having to post my personal e-mail address online.

5.  As a class we have created a few posts together.  When we wrote the posts about Remembrance Day and what they know about germs my students told me their ideas and I typed them out.  Since we did not have a lot of time those days I quoted my students ideas and in brackets I wrote what secret agent gave the idea.

 

When we blogged about the Firefighter Presentation and when they participated in the Missoula Workshop my students helped me create the introduction.  My students also added their own comments onto both blog posts to showcase their learning.

Does anyone have any ideas about what else I need to add to our classroom blog? Is there any pages that I should add onto our blog?

After reflecting about our classroom blog I started to look at my student’s learning blogs.  When you clicked onto my student’s blogs some of them have their artwork as their picture on their own blog page.  While some students still need to post their artwork.  Most of my student’s personal blog pages look like the picture below.

The only thing my student’s have on their learning blogs is an about me page.  When people click on the page link they are able to get to know my amazing and intelligent students!

So what’s next?? Why am I excited for this week??

I sat down and started to create what I do best….a to do list!!  I am going to get my students to add some posts to their personal blogs.  Then their pages will not be empty anymore!

Photo Credit: Rob Warde via Compfight cc

1. My students have made fantastic self portraits already so I thought that would be awesome to add their portrait onto their blog page.  All I need to do is scan their work or take a picture of it.

2. My students just finished learning about increasing patterns.  I thought it would be perfect to upload a picture of an increasing pattern they made in class.  Then they can describe their pattern and tell everyone what they know about increasing patterns.

3. I am going to ask my student’s what they want to add to their blog.  After all it is their learning page and their opinions and ideas are very important!

4. I am going to have a discussion with my students about comments and teach them the 3 C’s + Q model that I discussed in my “Just Keep Blogging…” post.

5.  On Tuesday and Wednesday it is our Student Led Conferences. I am going to have laptops in the hallway opened up to our classroom blog.  Then students can show their parents our blog and it would be a great reminder to parents to check out our blog weekly.  By having our blog open it will also allow for other parents and students in the school the opportunity to check out our blog too!

Photo Credit: AJC1 via Compfight cc

I am hoping to have everything checked off my to do list by the end of the week!

Does anyone have any advice in how they got their students to blog more independently? Do you upload the pictures yourself or do you get your students to upload their own pictures?  Do you upload work onto your student’s blogs only during school hours or do you upload work after school too? 

I am open to any ideas or suggestions about our class blog or advice what has worked great when blogging with your class!!   Please share!!