After returning from the ICE 2011 conference, my head has been full of exciting ideas that I would like to incorporate into my classroom! I have limited myself to my top 3 goals that I plan to incorporate into our core curriculum before the year is over.
1.) I would like all of my students to start individual blogs. My first graders are used to journaling, something we do 2 to 3 times a week. The goal is to take the journal entry and use that as a starting point to their blog entry. The students are also required to draw a picture to match their journal entry. I hope to take pictures of 5 individual pictures, each week and post them on
www.artsonia.com for the parents to view and purchase if they would like. I have been blessed with responsible 6th grade helpers that come down for 10-15 minutes after lunch every day. We will utilize the 6th grade helpers to get the netbooks up and running, help 1st graders log in, and then sign them into their
www.kidblog.org accounts. We will start this on opposite days of our media center. I will keep you posted on how this works with 1st grade students-I'm confident that they will do a great job with it!
2.) Publish a Classroom Book-we did this last year and it was a huge success for the students and the parents! I have attempted to start this project twice this year and did not have much success. Timing has been a major issue for us this year. When you decide to publish a classroom book, please allow for ample time to receive the information, give your students plenty of time to complete the project, and then the company needs a few weeks to get everything published and shipped back out. It is a timely process but one that is worth it! The students love to see their picture and their work in a published "real" book! If you have not taken time to publish a classroom book, I encourage you to try it. This will be the second year for our classroom recipe book :)
http://www.studentreasures.com/ The company that I am familiar with using.
3.) Skyping! I have been in contact with a teacher in Texas and a few other teachers locally. I would like my students to have the opportunity to interact and learn from their peers in a different state. I am still waiting for a reply, so if there are other brave primary teachers out there that would like to blog with my class, I am eager and ready to learn!!!
