It seems that we continue to have flurries of activity and exciting events happening. It was exciting to hear the announcement of Mrs. A's baby being born today! I wish she could have seen your happy faces. We welcome little Eli to the world and both parents and baby are doing just fine!
Mrs. A would have been so proud of you today. You all came into the blogging session and eagerly read your new comments and then proceeded to reply to as many as possible in the time we had. Eddie is getting a tremendous amount of comments. It seems a school from Australia has discovered his blog and teachers have discovered his blog and of course his terrific friends from Canada continue to comment! Eddie is striving to answer them all! I told him not to worry if he couldn't answer all of them but he wants to try! In fact I was working on some items last night and Eddie was commenting away as I worked. He was at home and I could just imagine him smiling as he read each and every comment. I think some other teachers have picked up on Eddie from Mr. Kuropatwa's blog, his class blog, and my other blog. We talked about that in class and how you never know for sure just how it happens unless one of your commenters tells you. One of the favorite words of one of my past blogging groups was ANTICIPATION! They'd come into the room anticipating if they had any comments, what they would be, who they would be from, and what they would say. You don't always get comments and that's OK but when you do the ANTICIPATION erupts into a very warm feeling inside.
Everyone received comments today. Lani is one we can always count on and she is so faithful. The world needs more people like Lani, right boys and girls? I heard you all second that! I know, I know, Lani is one of your favorite commenters! Also, thanks for the feedback on the comments sheets. The appeared to be very helpful for you. We will talk some more about managing comments and keeping up with them - not always an easy task when you get a lot. That's what I call a good problem to solve though.
Next we worked on categories. We need to work lots more on this and you will find that it will get easier. Practice makes perfect! Have you ever heard that saying? I think it gets perfect when we put all our heads together to problem solve. I wonder if any others have come up with good strategies to brainstorm about categories for blogs. If they have we encourage them to share their techniques. For now though keep thinking and we will get back to this soon. In fact when I come Friday we will do some more activites to learn this important skill.
Then each of you traveled over to Mr. Brune's fifth grade blogs and chose one student's blog to read through and then post about. I hope you had enough time to get back to the student's blog to make a comment and give the student a link back to your post. This was to give you further practice with linking and to learn what other fifth graders are blogging about and what they are thinking. The plan is to visit the other class blogs and pick students from those classes to blog about what they are learning. Blogging is reading, thinking, discussing, writing, commenting, linking, sharing and lots more. Think of words to add to this list!
Then some of you even managed to post about Mrs. A's new baby boy! Some of you got over to Harley's blog to respond to his posts. It was a productive day. You got a lot done and are really becoming good bloggers. One suggestion though - proofread! I noticed a couple of posts with almost no punctuation. Remember we watch that while we blog. We want to be good role models for other student bloggers. All in all though it was another great day in Georgia!!
I have also been in touch with Mr. Kruopatwa and some of his students will be mentoring you guys. We're working on the details. I am so delighted that this connection is emerging because the possiblilities are enormous. They always are when we have good students connecting and helping us learn how to guide this process to make it even more meaningful for all students.
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