As I mentioned in my post, we’ve got guest authors on the blog this weekend! Here’s a post by Kylie and Lauren. I know they’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on their work! 🙂
Tag Archives: writing
Guest Authors: Evan and Joshua–PE!
As I mentioned in my post, we’ve got guest authors on the blog this weekend! Here’s a post by Evan and Joshua. I know they’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on their work! 🙂
Guest Authors: Ella Marie and Sara–History Projects!
As I mentioned in my post, we’ve got guest authors on the blog this weekend! Here’s a post by Ella Marie and Sara. I know they’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on their work! 🙂
Rm. 202 Kids Take Over!
Ok, so let me start like this: I always have a plan. I know the things we need to work on, the way I want us to do that (and probably the ways I don’t!), and it’s “penciled in” for everyday. But the great part about that plan is that it is flexible. There is ALWAYS another option if we (the kids or me!) see that we need to go another way. A better way, perhaps. This is just what happened on Friday. I can’t WAIT to tell you about it. 🙂 Friday morning’s recess was great–it was the first time in WEEKS that the temperature had gotten over freezing–and we took full advantage of the sunny playground. I won’t tell you the whole story here, but in short, Millie and Makayla found a collection of things while we were outside that I thought was “blog-worthy” enough to tell you all about. “But why should I tell their story?” I thought to myself, and at that moment decided they could be guest authors on our blog (and that that would become our plan when we came inside from recess). “But shouldn’t everyone have a chance to do that?” I thought next. That’s when the light-bulb moment happened. As soon as we got in from recess we sat down to do something we’ve done many times before: create our chart that we’d use for our Class Meeting later in the day. What they didn’t know (until I told them next), was that we’d be doing something else very cool with it BEFORE our actual class meeting. Here’s what the list looked like after we brainstormed a bit: 
Once I explained the idea, it wasn’t long before kiddos had paired up and chosen their topics. But we weren’t ready yet. The next conversation was about how writing on my blog would be different than writing on their Kid Blogs. The first difference was audience. They figured out that rather than kids being the main readers, parents, principals (including our own beloved Mrs. Sisul!), teachers, authors, librarians and other adults (many that we don’t even know!) are the main readers of this blog. We discussed how that would mean we’d need to “up” our game to make the posts ready for 20somethingkids. Kylie was quick to add in that when I blog I use lots of pictures, and that my posts usually tell the “why” of the story–so that teachers can use our ideas with their own students. We agreed that we should probably use that same kind of thinking in our guest posts. At this point I just had to sit back and appreciate the amazingness of Rm. 202 kiddos. I smile when I listen to their wheels turn and their ideas flow; when I get out of the way, they make some pretty fabulous things happen on their own! Ok, so after our purpose and audience was set, and we had decided on our platform (which would be Notability since they all knew how to use it and I could easily copy it into WordPress), I set them loose. And left them alone. And watched them dig in and work hard and “buzz” with that sound that happens when kids are engaged and learning. They had a real purpose, a global audience of real people to write for, and lots of great learning from the week to share about. I got out of the way and let them be amazing.
Ella Marie and Sara discuss what they will tell blog readers about our history projects from this week.
Emily and Jacob draft their post about our class picture from earlier in the day.
Kylie and Lauren chose to write about the races kids have starting running at our morning recess.
Makayla and Millie (who’s work at recess sparked the whole idea in the first place!) write about a really cool collection of “B” things they found outside on the playground.
Peyton, C.J. and Thomas work hard to explain how we use writing journals in our room every day. They are EXPERTS at putting great ideas in their journals and were perfect for this topic. 🙂
Evan and Joshua chose to tell blog readers about PE and why they like it.
Ava and Amelia wrote about how we use Dreambox to learn as mathematicians every day!
Landen and Nate knew right away they wanted to explain our math warm-ups!
Charlie and Diego worked to tell about our current chapter book The One and Only Ivan (we are LOVING it, by the way!).
I am SO excited to share their work with you! Rm. 202 kiddos–I’m SO PROUD OF YOU!!! 🙂
First Grade Bloggers!: Part 5–Teaching the BIG kids!
Alright….one more time…here are the links to the first four parts of the story. And this one is probably the biggest and best: this part of the story is about how 20 super smart first grade bloggers taught their FIFTH GRADE BUDDIES about how to blog. Yup–you heard me right: the little kids taught the BIG KIDS something. Before I even tell you what happened, I feel like I should start with my some of my kiddos’ words about how it felt. Wait—maybe that will tell the story better than anything else I could say. 🙂
Evan—“It felt spectacular. I felt good teaching a 5th and I’m only a 1st grader. It was hard. He kept on asking me questions and I wasn’t sure how to answer.”
Peyton—”It made me feel happy. It filled up my bucket to be a good teacher to a 5th grader.”
Lauren—“I felt happy because I got to see my buddy and there were words that were popping up that were funny.” (I think this is about the auto-correct feature on their iPads 🙂 ).
Ella Marie—“It felt awesome. I got to make blogs and I like blogs! I saw something new and I told my buddy about it.”
Sara—“I felt happy because we could make a blog together.”
Charlie—“I felt like I was the most important teacher in the world! I like that my buddies are funny!”
Diego—“I felt so happy because usually big kids but usually little kids were the teachers!” (Doesn’t this one just say it all?!)
Kylie—“I felt good because we got to experience new things that I didn’t know about, then I figured out I did know about it.”
Emily—”It felt good because I felt like a teacher and also it felt good to teach a 5th grader!! Little kids usually get taught by bigger ones.” (Again–what an authentic audience!)
Thomas—“I was really excited because it was my first time writing with a 5th grader. It opened up my grit.”
Amelia—“I felt really happy because I didn’t know how to spell a word, and my LB helped me. It filled up my bucket!”
The assessment we used to tell us we did a SUPER JOB of explaining blogs to our buddies? Their questions to their teacher as they left our room: “Dr. Grayson, can we have our own blogs, too?” What more could we ask for?? 🙂
First Grade Bloggers!: Part 4–GOING LIVE!
Yep, there were three parts before this one that gave more details of this exciting journey into the blogosphere! (Part 1 Part 2 Part 3)
After we had done days and days of prerequisite work (including teaching our friends in Rm. 203 about how to comment on blogs and having them join us for a day of practice), we were ready to give it a try (plus, we had to be ready for when we’d teach our 5th grade buddies all we knew about blogging–more on that later!). Needless to say, the excitement in the room was CRAZY!!
These pics are from our share session with our neighbors, but they really could show what it looked like as we started our blogs, too. I mean, I guess there’s no real way to show the process of writing a new blog except maybe to share the blogs with you! As you read our new Kid Blogs, imagine the big smiles on our faces as we made them! Being a blogger is SERIOUS BUSINESS when you’re 6! Check it out!
First Grade Bloggers!: Part 3
If you haven’t read part 1 and part 2 of our blogging journey yet, you can check them out here and here. 🙂
After we had a chance to try out commenting for ourselves on our friends’ paper blogs, it was time to get down to the REAL business of REAL commenting on REAL blogs with REAL people! This was one of those places where I added in some extra lessons to the version of Blogging 101 I have done with 5th graders. I just felt like my little bloggers needed more opportunities to practice before they graduated to their own blogspace.
With many things we are learning and practicing for the first time, turn-and-talk or partner conversations are a good way to work through concepts with a friend. This allows for each to teach and learn (based on what they know), and also to help ensure that everyone is on the same (or at least a similar) page before we move on to doing things independently.
As we gathered for Writers’ Workshop, I had kiddos sit with their elbow partners and explained that I was going to give them a “blog” to read and that they were then supposed to turn-and-talk with their partner about how they would respond to that “post.” I made sure to write examples that they could relate to, and encouraged them to remember to include what they had learned about how to leave a good comment: respond to the writing, say more to give details or reasons, and to ask a question to keep the conversation going. Together with their partners, everyone had a chance to role-play with at least 5 or 6 of these scenarios:
I tried to write posts that seemed real and relevant to first graders (like ones that they might read on others’ blogs and that they would eventually write on their own!), as well as ones that had examples of the parts of a blog post that we would talk about soon after this.
As a check-in to assess how kiddos had been doing, and to give those that might need more support some ideas, we went through each “post” and shared out some examples of responses. Together we “graded” the responses by giving thumbs-up if all of the components were there. Like I said before, this was a new step to my blogging process, but I’m really pleased with how it went and how excited they were about learning it!
The next day I gave them their first go at trying these newly acquired skills on someone else’s blogs. Together with their partner (the same one as the previous day), they read blog posts and commented. This day also add a separated but related lesson of its own: QR codes! Since I knew that this would be a quick and easy way to get websites and other links to my kiddos, but since I also knew they hadn’t heard of them before, I introduced the concept as the way to get to the blogs we would be visiting. Yep, a two-birds-one-stone situation. 🙂 They learned how to use the QR reader, how to find the site they were looking for and then also how to manipulate the interface of KidBlog.org itself (which would soon come into play as they saw their own KidBlog site!).
They had a great time and did a great job practicing their new commenting skills. The downside? The only links I could find to 1st Grade KidBlogs (at the time) were archived ones from classes that were not able to respond to the comments we left. 😦 Oh well, we got to practice on our end anyway, right? 🙂
First Grade Bloggers!–Part 2
I started our blogging story yesterday, with how I introduced the whole idea to my first graders. Like I mentioned, they’re pros already!!
After we made our paper blogs, we were ready to talk about comments, and how the whole point of a blog in the first place is the conversation it starts. We talked generally about how to comment, and then studied this document, another great resource I got from @mcteach. It’s called the “Art and Aspirations of a Commenter,” and while I had to paraphrase much of it for 6-7yos, the idea still applies:
We discussed what the parts of a comment were supposed to be, and then tried it on each others’ blogs. Much like we do when we have a gallery walk in math or a writing celebration in writing, everyone laid out their blogs and kids read and wrote: one comment on each post-it, then post-its on paper posts. Check out this amazing video to show how quiet and focused everyone was during this time. Seriously. Believe me. It’s good stuff.
So after that experience, our paper blogs looked like this:
These kids are picking up this whole blogging thing so fast and furiously! Can’t wait to share the next step! 🙂
First Grade Bloggers!–Part 1
As with past years, I was SUPER EXCITED to get my kids blogging! This year was no different, well except that my bloggers are only 6 and 7 years old, and they don’t have iPads yet, and most of them didn’t even know what a blog was when they started in Rm. 202. Ok, so yeah…really different. But my excitement to bring this experience to my students was no different–I just knew I’d have to figure out how to make it work for first graders. I think I’ve figured it out, and thought I’d share my steps here. Many are the same as in years past, but I’ve added in a few that are specific to younger learners. Here we go!
As with years, past, I thought about starting our conversation with the question “What is a blog?” Like I already mentioned, the background knowledge of my students was much less than previous (older) students. I had to go all the way back to the beginning and be really explicit with what in the world I was talking about. Luckily, we’ve been reading this blog since the beginning of the year, so that was a place to start. But, because of my experience with blogging and the connections you can make from all over the world, I started there instead: Wouldn’t it be cool if people from ALL OVER THE WORLD could read what you write? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could TALK to people you didn’t know from far away places? This was the hook they needed. Just the mention of all the people I know from other countries got my kiddos all giddy and ready to go. So “go” we did!
This time around I needed a more visual way of explaining exactly what a blog is and how it is used, and so BrainPop Jr. came to the rescue with a video all about blogs (I should add that it’s actually my 2nd grader who told me this video existed. He’s a big fan and watches lots of Brain Pop while he’s in the classroom waiting for me–which is alot!. He said he knew there was a blogging video and I should try it with my kiddos. Teacher in the making? Thanks, Riley!). It was great in how it told what a blog was, what the parts of a blog are, as well as about comments and some safety tips about what to do/not do online. And since it’s short and familiar, it kept everyone’s attention. Win-win. 🙂
After we watched the video, we looked at some other examples of blogs. I shared many of the ones that I read, and we talked about what we noticed about how they’re laid out, what the theme is, what kinds of things are written on them, etc. (In case you’re wondering, here’s my list: Make It-Love It, I Heart Organizing, The Candy Blog (this one is actually not one I read, but my hubby does and I knew the kiddos would love it!), and Life with Lily (And Daisy and Caleb!). I should have also included Weelicious (which was once a blog and is now more like a traditional website) and Im4Students (my teammates’ blog!), but I forgot until after we were done. 😦 You’ll have to be sure to check them out or use them when you teach about blogs!
It’s a wonder how they waited through all of that explanation and waited for me to explain their next steps, because, like I said, that were EXCITED to get started! And speaking of next steps, the next part was for them to create their own blogs. But on paper first (this is a technique I learned long ago as I started blogging and was learning from other teachers like Karen McMillan (@mcteach) and Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp) who shared their resources online for others to use!).
One last thing before we got started: I showed them some examples from past years, and we created a chart to show what should be in our posts.
I was SUPER IMPRESSED with how quickly they took to it! They understood what to do, and did it effectively. Here are some pics while we were working:
Come back soon for Part 2–comments!
The 100th Day–YAY!! (Part 1)
Whew! Our 100th day of school was today! Boy am I tired! WE WERE BUSY!!
I’ve been thinking about how to spend that day (and mainly trying to figure out how to both “celebrate” and still be rigorous and meaningful in my choices), and had landed on several ideas I was pretty excited about. The good news? We were able to use my idea list today. The bad news (well, just the other news I guess…)? We just did one of those things. Let me explain. 🙂
If you were writing down a list of what we accomplished today, it would just say “blogging.” I even had a kiddo say, “All we did was blog today, Mrs. Bearden.” What? That’s ALL we did? In a word, yes, but MAN was there a TON of learning and thinking involved in that day of blogging! I am SUPER AMAZED at what we were able to do today.
I started the day by telling my friends that I had prepared several challenges for them to do and that we could spend the day with those things. We usually start our day with writing, so I shared the writing challenge first, with plans to share the rest of the challenges as we went on through the day. The first thing we planned to work on was a blogging challenge.
With it being the 100th day of school, and the fact that we just went live with our blogs yesterday, I knew they’d appreciate a challenge around the “bigness” of 100 things on their blog. I suggested we try to write 100 blog posts or comments. Or they could challenge themselves to write a post using 100 words (which would be a HUGE STRETCH from the 2-3 sentence posts we’ve written so far). As I had hoped and expected, they were SUPER excited to get started, and were totally up to the challenge!
Our next step was to figure out how we could make it happen. This was a great conversation filled with much mathematical knowledge of groups of 10, counting on by 10s (as I told them we had 17 posts right then and wondered how many there would be if we added 100 more today), and splitting 10s into 5s to figure out new groups (someone said they knew that if it took 10 10s to make 100, it would take 20 5s since 5+5=10). We divided (without knowing it) 100 by the 20 people in the room (including me!), and as we went through the challenge we did lots of adding and subtracting to figure how many more we needed and how many we had at any given point.
We got started, and you know what? I don’t have many pictures of the work we did. I was as busy as they were, answering questions, moderating posts and comments and helping everyone as needed. So with 20 people, 12 iPads and 5 MacBooks between us, we were able to complete 100 BLOG POSTS AND COMMENTS today!! YIPPEE!! It took us almost all day, but we did it! And when we were finished, we had this to say:
(Hopefully you can tell they’re saying, “I00 BLOGS ROCK!!”
Now, I go back to that part about “all we did was blog all day,” because even though I didn’t mean to, at one point I even questioned whether I had done enough with the day. We didn’t have a big long list of activities to show for our time together. No one took home anything different than a normal day. We didn’t have any thing to prove we worked hard and stretched our thinking today. We did, however, have this:
It’s a little hard to see, but these are the charts where we kept tally of all of the posts/comments we finished. We counted them by 10s, 1s, and 2s at several points during the day as we figured out what we’d done and how much we had to go. It hangs outside our room for others to see. I’m hoping it will elicit questions for my kids (and for me) about how we spend our100th day! We have a great story to tell!
(ok, we did have a few pictures of the day!)
We also have a Kidblog dashboard that looks like this:
Yesterday we had 17 posts and 0 comments! Check out those numbers as of tonight! We have only been on our blogs since yesterday morning–crazy, right? We’re rocking and rolling already!!
And perhaps even better, we have memories. We have encouragement that came from our friends–“We can do this!”–when we wanted to give up. We have full buckets from the words our friends wrote about our stories. We have new knowledge about how to work the iPads and laptops on our own. We have that feeling that comes with accomplishing a goal. We have successful problem solving that happens when we’re allowed to figure things out for ourselves or talk with our classmates. We have practice with creating meaningful writing for a REAL audience; we worked hard to make our words look right, sound right and make sense. We have practice with letters, sounds and words and we have momentum to go forward with our writing. AND we have a great list of things that we didn’t finish today that we’ll use to continue our learning tomorrow! hee hee
So as I reflected, I thought it would be a great visual (for me at least) to look at our district’s rubrics and match up how today’s work addressed the expectations therein. Check out how many ways this simple blogging challenge touched our 1st grade standards:
Reading
Writing
Speaking and Listening
Learning Behaviors and Study Skills
So needless to say I am tired tonight! I’m pretty sure my kids are, too! The amount of grit they had to use to make today happen and accomplish the HUGE goal set before them was great. And while I know that I am a little biased, I’d say that today was definitely a day we can say we worked to get a little closer to helping Rm. 202 kids meet this mission of Robinson School:
What did you do for your 100th day? What have you heard from Rm. 202 kids about their day? Please share your thoughts with us! We’re learning how blogging is all about the conversation, and we’d love to start a conversation with YOU! 🙂
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 