Very Special Welcome!
As a new creator of my first grade blog, I want to stress the purpose and rationale behind this blog. "Teachers are members of learning communities and accomplished teachers find ways to work collaboratively and creatively with parents, engaging them productively in the work of the school" (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 2002). As I said before, it is designed for first grade and will, eventually, encompass all subject areas. In these very beginning stages, the main purpose of the blog will be to involve parents by keeping up to date messages, events, and information posted that involves Mrs. Brumett's first grade classroom. I would like to see the blog evolve into a web space that provides downloadable documents for parents and children to use for enrichment! I would like to offer online links, even videos, for extra practice in all subject areas (with a main focus on math and reading). All in all, I want this to be an interactive, collaborative site between myself as teacher and my students and parents.
Ms. Ellen, I can't wait to see what you are going to post. I also would like to connect my parents, students, and colleagues as well. Students send home a communication folder each week, we as a grade level and as a school send home a newsletter, but to add a medium like a blog might even engage those parents who don’t participate as much as they want to. Seeing the information and student work might capture the interest in the students and the parents.
ReplyDeleteThank you Deborah! I am really intriqued by this idea of blogging and am excited to explore the different ways to create, offer, and maintain information on the blog! I think this is going to be my biggest challenge! :)
DeleteI think using this blog is a great way to keep your communication open with your students and families. It will be a great way to help parents know what is going on in the classroom and what things they can do to help their child develop or strengthen skills at home without having to search for hours for resources and being left wondering if the items they find teach the content that is being covered in class.
ReplyDeleteMy question for you regards how you will organize your information. Will you create separate pages within your blog for the various subject areas you teach? Will you create folders based upon topics? Will you simply post resources in the blog post section with links or will you create a link list of resources? Also, how will you organize these?
The reason I have these questions is because they are thoughts I'm trying to find answers to for my own classroom webpage/blog. Currently I have TONS (probably over 100) links to math games I've found this year to help my students strengthen their skills. Our school website at this point only lets me make a list of sites and not folders. I can sort these, but I have to do it manually and it doesn't have an alphabetize feature (I wish it did because I name them according to math standard like Number Sense-then the name of the game). This class is teaching me about new and easier resources to use. I may simply change my school webpage to just one single link....a link to my personal blog/webpage that I have more control over the content and also that I'll have a say when things get wiped out. (Our school keeps switching companies and never gives us a heads up so all of our stuff gets deleted without warning at random times!)
I look forward to checking out your blog throughout this course and even after this course ends.
Hi Mindy! I love your questions! They really got me to thinking about how I am going to organize my blog. I haven't really gone that far yet in my thinking and am not sure I have a real good answer now! LOL! I think I would like to develop pages for each subject and be able to offer specific links and activities for each subject on its own page. I think the easier and more manageable I can make the site, the better it will be and the more likely parents and students will be to utilize the resource!
DeleteLike you, I have my own website through the school. I have to be careful as well about how much information and uploads I do. I just put my blog shortcut on my webpage this week and hope that I can have more control as well through the use of the blog! Thanks so much for your comments and I am enjoying working with you in this course! :)
As I was reading, I had that same questions Mindy did. I also wonder, what is your parent support/involvement like? At the beginning of the year I told the parents the address for my class website and showed them multiple ways to access the site (type in the address or through the school's website) but I still ran into parents that did not know I even had a site. I recently put the address in my signature on e-mails so they can be reminded when they receive an e-mail from me. If you do not know how to make a signature appear on all your e-mails find out how because it is a really nice feature!
ReplyDeleteWill there be a requirement that the students must access your site? A challenge I run into is that the students forget the site is there. As first graders, are they able to have computer time at home by themselves? I have freshman and sophomores and I do not run into this issue, but when I babysat some first graders a while back their parents monitored their websites. It will be important that parents know your site exists and that they also help their son or daughter access it on a regular basis if you want interactions to occur.
-Danielle
I have the same issue Danielle mentioned. I also teach first grade, and I have sent numerous notes home to parents about the website and all of the resources available there. Yet, I continue to have parents asking for resources which are on the home page of the website!
ReplyDeleteTo help this problem, I have taught my students to go to my website and find whatever resources for which they are looking. The students are great about navigating through the website, though it did take a while to get them to this point. Most of my students have access to the computer every night at home, so I know that my students are able to access the information themselves, even if their parents forget!
Hi, welcome to blogging. I just found you and am your newest follower. I love blogging for the very reason you are talking about - collaborating and sharing ideas to implement and make my class a better place to be. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteVicky
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