Classroom Blog Example

I was really impressed with Mrs. Cassidy’s classroom blog. It seemed like she really made the website a useful tool. In each blog entry, she described what the class did that day. All of the entries are accompanied by either a picture or a video. I really liked the videos because a student filmed each one, and the kids were impressively skilled with the camera.

It seems like videotaping the kids is a good way for them to display what they have learned because it’s exciting and fun for them. They seem to get into it - they all have their lines prepared and it seems like they must practice. I liked how interactive her lesson was the day it was too cold for most of the class to come to school. She asked the class what they would like to learn about and they picked snakes. The final product of the day was a video with all of the kids sharing a fact about snakes they had learned while holding the snakes they had made. It was a very cute video!

I also watched a “Sketchcast” made by a student at the University of Regina. She explained the uses of uppercase and lowercase letters while the video drew along with her. I thought it was kind of cool that each of the college students had a “blogging buddy” in the first grade class. Each student in Mrs. Cassidy’s class shared his or her blog with their college buddy. Mrs. Cassidy commented that having this audience pushed her students to be better writers.

 Also, on another classroom blog, there was a video showing how to make a construction paper snowflake. make a construction paper snowflake. I love arts and crafts, so I decided to try. As it turned out, the snowflake needed six pieces of paper and turned out to be HUGE. So now I have a gigantic paper snowflake, but it really is the coolest snowflake I’ve ever made.