Creative Thinkers and Fledgling BLoggers

The boys and girls got off to a great start this morning!  We began our day with a discussion on our class Blogging Guidelines.  These can be found in a new tab on our main page.  Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with them.  


We also learned how to post a comment on our blog.  First, we watched a video by Mrs. Yollis' 3rd grade students from Los Angeles, California:  How to Compose a Quality Comment, http://vimeo.com/15695021.  We discussed the tips they shared for quality commenting and then the students wrote a rough draft of their own comment and posted it on our Rotation D blog.  They did a wonderful job!  If you have a moment, check out their thoughts.


I explained that our blog is an academic blog and should not be used as a social network.  I want to avoid students spending large amounts of time just socializing here.  I want them to post comments on their learning and "Ah Ha!" moments.  The source of their learning and revelations can be from within or outside of school.  Ideally, I would like to see students post a comment from home once or twice a week.  In the beginning, their comments may not be very sophisticated.  With instruction, practice and encouragement, your child will gain a desire to share their ideas and opinions with others and the skills to do it through our blog.  Blogging provides a real world platform for students to improve not only their reading and writing skills, but also the technology skills 21st Century Learners will need.  


Please encourage your child to share their enthusiasm and experiences from rich learning moments.  At this age, they will need your support and assistance with proof reading their comments prior to clicking that "publish" button.  In the next week or so, I will try to get a screen cast tutorial made on how to post a comment to our blog for those parents and grandparents that would like directions.  By all means, please encourage your child's grandparents, aunts, uncles and other interested adults to post comments about your child's projects and learning on our blog too!   I am looking forward to hearing from you all!

For about three weeks, we struggled with problems between Internet Explorer and Blogger.  From my research, Safari and FireFox seem to be a good match to Blogger, but IE has had problems working with it.  Many of you may have tried to post a comment earlier in the year only to have it erased, without your post going through.  Thanks to our IT department, I think we have finally found a "fix."  Please let me know if you are ever having difficulties with the blog.  A lot of this is new for me too, so in some cases, the kids and I are learning together.  (I hope you don't mind being dragged along with us!)  If you have a working knowledge of blogs and have any suggestions or ideas, please pass them along to me!

The students continued their individual work in Exploratory today.  Ask your child about their current task.  I think everyone is now past the Knowledge and Comprehension level tasks.  Now they can choose any other task from this same center to complete.  I will continue to encourage them to take their time for their personal best effort.  

In the afternoon, they learned the rules for brainstorming. 

• Accept the unusual
• Never critcize or compliment
• Piggyback when possible
• Never stop too soon.

They individually brainstormed "things you might find in a pocket."  We judged their ideas for their fluency and their originality.  Have your child tell you more about their list.  They are a very creative class!


We ended our day with a Quirkles Science lesson on Inquisitive Inman.  We learned the vocabulary words: inquisitive, intelligent, investigator, immediately, indigo and infer.  Later this evening, I hope to post a slide show of pictures from our Quirkles experiment.  Check back and take a peek!
 Have a great week!