Elementary Bloggers

Blogging has taken hold at Star Academy! Every single one of our elementary classes at Star Academy is starting to share their learning using classroom blogs.

Why are they doing it? Blogging provides an opportunity for the students to publish together as a class for a public audience. It is also a perfect tool for teaching digital citizenship and the differences between online and print-based writing. Additionally, blogs are handy for building classroom community and for connecting your classroom to the larger world through comments posted by parents, relatives, and other classrooms.

What are Star Academy students writing about? Well, it depends on the week, classroom, and types of activities taking place.  However, here are a few sample posts.

Kindergarten

• Gingerbread People - Students in Mrs. Kahler's class created gingerbread people. Using their classroom blog as a digital container the class posted a slideshow of their creations and visitors posted written feedback.

1st Grade

• Owl Pellets - Students in Mrs. Luhrsen's class dissected owl pellets and used their classroom blog to share some of the things they learned. This class also used their blog to share their class Skype session with another group of students in Monterrey, Mexico.
• Currently Reading - In Miss Kloczko's classroom the students used their blog to share reflections on the books they were currently reading. This also shared what they were thankful for during the month of November, including this post on being thankful for our moms. 

2nd Grade

• Author Erin Dealey Visits - In Mrs. Evans' class the students wrote about their visit from children's author Erin Dealey.
• Student Technology Support - Mrs. Torres describes how students can often be great technology support staff in the classroom with this story about placing your icon on the Google Map. The class also described their first BYOD technology day.

3rd Grade

• Friday Report - In Ms. Fraser's class students share their learning each week by writing a collaborative Friday Report. Check out this one from December 13th.

Blogs can really be anything you want them to be - a summary of your learning as a teacher, pictures or digital artifacts from a classroom event, collaboratively written stories created by the class, or posts written by individual guest authors. Your imagination is the only limit. However, regardless of the topic a blog post is always a conversation, so when you have a moment leave a comment on a post for our Star Academy bloggers.

Joe

Photo: Blogging Research Wordle by Kristina B on Flickr