Using Our Blog

We had a very eventful day today!  Our morning began with Viola joining our class!  We now have everyone officially here and we can get off and running!  My other students were so welcoming and did a marvelous job of making her feel at home in our room.  I am very proud of them!  I can not tell you how excited I am to work with these twenty-five students!  I go home each day excited for the next and that is a wonderful feeling as a teacher!

After a busy morning of social studies, math, and interactive read-aloud we came into our room in the afternoon and went to the computer lab.  I wanted to show the students my classroom website and let them interact with it a bit.  Just like I thought, the Puzzles were a bit hit!  Students were on there busily putting together puzzles and searching for words in our word search activities.   It was also nice to see them check out how to look up their homework each night or how to find their class list or school supply list.  I really want to see them utilizing this resource at home!

Finally it was onto our blog!  I showed my students how they can make posts on our blog.  Wow!  I have some great comments to read!!  I told them they could now go home and show their parents how to post comments.  I hope they do this!  Parents, if you do get confused on what to do, please email me or call me and I can walk you through it! 

We did have a conversation on using our blog safely!   Cyberbullying and the use of social networks in negative ways is really big right now and that is not the type of environment I want to create for my students.  I discussed how important it is not write mean or hateful things on our page...or how we do not talk about other people in mean ways...or use our blog to invite people to parties or other events...or not to post silly things that do not relate to what we are learning...

I told them that I want to view posts on how they think they day went, or read their excitement about a project or activity they did, or read about what they are learning, or read comments regarding pictures they see posted.  I asked them to come to me personally if they had concerns or negative things to say.  They all agreed they could do this.  We all agreed we want our blog to be a safe environment, just like our classroom or our school.

Again, what a great group of kids!!!  They seem really excited to have the opportunity to use this site!!  I know I am!

Happy Bloggin!