Mrs. Streeter’s Class

After discussing Nichole’s page I realized I posted too soon.  Maybe the performer in Nichole is pushing her to be a little too open on the blog page.  Linda wondered if she would write the same way if she knew her parents had access.  That is an excellent question…

If I am able to use a blog page at my school I will. The possibilities for using this in  the first grade classroom are endless and exciting.  One weakness I have in my teaching is keeping in close enough contact with the parents.  This could easily remedy that by allowing parents to check out homework, in class projects and assignments, a “Look at this student” section, an “I love it” section for students and teacher, parent feedback and support, among other things!  An issue may be that some parents don’t have access at home or they may not care…but these are not new issues and need to be addressed anyway.

Nichole’s insight is beyond her years, unless I’ve been away from high school kids for too long. Her entries were threaded together nicely; whether she meant to do that or not doesn’t matter because it is what her end result was. Also, I was interested in seeing all of the support she received from her friends and how they really stuck to the “blogging etiquette” (bletiquette?) tee hee. I wish something like this was around when I was in high school. What a way to make your voice heard!

by Physibeth

I wonder if I know this happy couple or if they are really happy…hmmm.

I think Nichole’s page shows that she is a wise young lady who is experiencing all of the right things she needs to be prepared for adult life…whenever that is!

Last night I found some comments that writing guru, Tom Romano, made about his favorite approach. He is one of my favorites, not only because he teaches at my alma mater, but because he his books are fun to read and he is so passionate about what he does.

I’m for it! I love the idea of using educational blogging in my classroom. This would be an excellent way to communicate with the parents of my first graders about the exciting events that happen in our little world. In fact, the kids would be able to describe and voice their opinions (find their voices) in a community with teacher and parent support. I believe this will be a huge motivator for the reluctant reader/writer to work on skills so that they can get their ideas across. This could even be used as an informal research site to learn about community jobs and aspects of various cultures…especially with the families within the classroom. Posting homework would be easy along with the list of sight words, spelling words, math activities for enrichment and remediation, at home science experiments, etc. This is exciting!