Welcome to Blogging!

Dear parents/guardians:

This year your child will be participating in an online blogging assignment related to science. A blog is basically a website that is designed by an individual or group of people in which the creators can make posts relating to whatever topic they want and can allow others to make comments based on the posts. The overall topic of our class blog will be focused on the different types of biomes in nature. So, for our blog site, the title will be Ms. Verbeck’s 4^th grade Biomes project and there will be a pages within the blog for each specific biome (deserts, aquatic, forests, tundra, and grasslands). Your child will be in a group with 3 or 4 other classmates and each group will be assigned a specific biome in which they will make posts every two weeks. Within their designated page, the groups will research and post facts, pictures, and/or videos related to the overall environment, weather, animals, plants, etc. found within their biome. Every two weeks the groups will upload posts and all of the students will be able to respond or make comments about each other’s posts and can ask questions or even edit each other’s writing.

This blogging project is a very significant assignment because it allows your child to gain knowledge in many skills that they will need later in their life. For one, this gives your child more experience with technology skills that will probably be very prevalent when they reach the older grades and could even help them in their careers someday! Also, students can also work on literacy skills for this assignment because they get to decide and write out what they want to post and work on the layout in which they want to present the information. This assignment will allow the students to work on organization and grammatical skills. Also, since this is a blog and the class as a whole will get access to it, all of the students can proofread and critique each other groups (e.g. if something does not make sense on one of the pages, another student can make a comment to ask the group to clarify or rephrase the information).

I know this is will be a very exciting project for you child to participate in and he/she will want you to be able to see the progress they have made, so you, as a parent, will also have access to the blogs and the ability to view the pages. This is a secure website but you, as a parent/guardian, will have special privileges to make posts and comments on the pages. We are very excited about this and can't wait for you to be a part of it!

Sincerely,

Ms. Verbeck

Dear Parents,

Welcome! I want to cordially be involved with your student’s development into our future. Our classroom will be incorporating a great technological advantage that our generation didn't get to use in the most efficient way: blogging. "Isn't that dangerous?" "Is it really necessary?" Will my student get anything out of this?" All of these questions and more will be answered in this first composite blog post I have developed.

What exactly is a blog? A blog is a comment based website that has specific topics to talk about. For this blog, your students are going to be discussing their classroom curricular topics such as explorers, the planets, books, math problems and much more. Students will be able to view the question(s) and also their classmate’s answers to help them think about their topic. Think of this site as an extension of our classroom and its discussions- because it is.

Way is this important to my students and their education? What happens in a classroom discussion? Generally the same 6 or 7 students answer and provide their ideas, and when asked to recall what was said, the students forgot to take notes to help them for a quiz or test. Blogging, however, is the exact opposite of that. Each student is required to respond; so those who don’t normally get a chance to express themselves get heard and give their ideas to their peers. Also the students have a hard copy of what everyone has said in the discussion. This gives them the chance to look back at something that they might have missed and gives them the opportunity to think harder on what has been said.

Well, can my student fall victim to online praying? NO! With all of this great technology has come great security systems that keep the users safe from anything dangerous. To post on this blog you have to have clearance from myself only; not even the administrators are able to log onto the blog unless I give them permission. I will only be allowing the classroom onto the site, no one else. I will also be going over strict blog writing instructions to prevent any cyber bullying that may try to be present in any of the discussions. I also look through each of the posts and monitor for everything that is not school friendly.

For a focus project for our blog, the students will we discussing the invention of flight. Each student will take a specific flight "machine"- Leonardo’s helicopter, the Kitty Hawk plane, Zeppelins, etc- and develop a comprehensive report on that machine. The project will be completed in stages, answering questions about their research topic. At the end of the semester the students will compile their research and, with my few connections, our class will get a spot in 'Popular Science' magazine covering the history of flight (cool!).

I know that it is hard to watch your student struggle through something, but this blog is intended to help your student learn and develop, not just get work done. So I have made it only possible for students to post on this blog. I have a similar blog set up for parents, administrators, and other parties to comment about the week’s topics and posts, but I want the first site to be all about the students. You will be able to look at the original student lead post, but you cant comment on it. The posts and comments will all be available to see, you just can’t comment yourself.

Remember, this blog is not about you. While you may be smarter in some areas, I want the students to get the most out of their peers, not their parents. The students will have major topic posts due every two weeks, and then smaller posts whenever we have a topic in class that I want them to discuss and think about more.

On a special note, for those who are not able to have their child post from home, I would like you to get in contact with me ASAP so that I can set up a schedule for your student to use the computer in the library or the classroom. Not having a computer at home is not an excuse for not turning in assignments. I expect every one of my students to do their work; and I know you do too. I will have a list of when all the postings are due (the major ones) on the blog calendar as well as our classroom website that has a link to our blog site. If you ever forget where our sites are located, they are under the schools main website, under teacher sites.

I look forward to hearing from your students and watching them grow through the blog site. This site is all about developing the students and I believe it to be starting out that way nicely.

Mr. Shannon