Vanessa's Blog

Brand new third graders, fresh out of second grade are still being introduced to the concept of responses to literature, which is what this blog is designed for.  The year long goal for third grade is to be able to write a great paragraph around a central theme.  This blog will be introduced about half way through the year if not sooner depending on the learning and writing abilities of my group.  I would like to take the time to discuss quality responses and work together as a whole class first to develop comments together.  These comments will be modeled after my own sample comments as well as co-constructed comments which we will analyze and discuss together.  Much time must be given to feedback for student work as well.  Once quality comments have reached a certain level of mastery we will then embark on what is and navigation of the blog itself.  Edublogs has a 30 day challenge for teachers, which gives a step by step process for getting students blogging.  I would like to start there.

Permission slips and parent letters will be sent home and a universal class login has been created:  mitchellkids.  I have also used my school email account which is always available to students.  Since my students will not be creating posts only commenting on posts these are the only two identifiers I foresee they will need.  Some time will be spent loggin in and writing the anti spam identifier.

The blog has an Internet safety category where students are directed to such safety rules as only using their first name in their posts and to never give personal or false information.  I’ve likened a blog comment to “imagine your mom is reading your posts” type scenario so students will understand respect and consideration are a must.  Comments must also be approved by me before they are made public.  An additional accountability safeguard I will use is students will have scheduled times and days they are to comment, this allows me to know who is posting what and when.

Edublogs is not blocked by my district, Yay!  However, the powers that be do require parental permission for student use of social media.  Not a problem, a permission slip is in the plan.  Parents and administrators will both receive my welcome letter which consists of a thorough explanation of what a blog is, reason for use and safety/privacy settings.  The principal of my site encourages creative use of technology and only asks to be given the letter as well as the link to the site with any necessary passwords. 

What did I learn from setting up this site?  So much to learn, so little time.  Blogs are a work in progress!  They grow and change and change some more with every new thought, every new found wonderful teacher blog, with every new group of students.  I am now toying with the idea of setting up multiple blogs for different groups of users in addition to a class blog.  Meet the students’ needs at different levels of academic abilities.  Exemplary examples too are absolutely necessary; for me and my students.  Uber organization, a must as well, is absolutely necessary for when I begin the development phase of any blog or site, because much time can be wasted searching for images or texts.  A uniform naming system is a must too! 

Developing two blogs was a great learning experience.  I was able to become much more familiar with the features and settings of Edublogs and I can develop one pretty quickly.  One Change:  I changed the job aids from being online links to printed job aids, less changing screens for third graders.   

The nature of my evaluation will be two-fold.  The primary focus will be on the quality of student responses.  As moderator I will have the opportunity to read comments before approving them.  During this time I will maintain running records to monitor student growth, commenting on their posts to guide deeper thinking and comprehension.  Rubrics will also be used to gauge student understanding, although on a more formal basis since most blog posts will be short.

My secondary focus will be on the effectiveness of a blog as a literary response tool.  Through the use of informal conferencing while students are working, questionnaires, observation and more formal interviews I hope to gather evaluative information to show the effectiveness of a blog as well as areas of improvement.  I have the luxury of working with my target audience on a daily basis so summative evaluation can take place throughout the year.

Kirkpatrick’s Evaluation Techniques will serve as a great guide for my efforts:

Level 1-  Reactions to the instructional blog will be easily obtained by the above mentioned tools; conferencing, observation, questionnaires, comments and formal interviews.

Level 2  (Learning)-  Monitoring comments made by the students will allow me to see if and what kind of learning is taking place.  Formal tests will also be used to gauge deeper understanding of texts, characters, themes or pieces as a whole.

Level 3 (Transfer)-  Having access to my target audience on a daily basis allows me to see transfer of skills and knowledge.  Class projects will be used to gauge whether or not students have gained an application level of understanding.  I will also monitor if any of the skills learned through collaborative discussion transfers to other subject areas.

Level 4 (Results)-  Results of the California State Standards Tests as well as formal assessments will be used to determine if the instructional efforts of a classroom blog has produced the results it was designed for.  Of course other measures will be taken into account for instance reading levels, language abilities, special education needs etc. because test scores alone do not show a well-rounded picture of the results I seek.  Test scores combined with conferencing, running records and observation I believe will yield more accurate results.

I will be using Edublogs to develop my classroom blog.  It is simple to use and navigate and is made for educator use.  As moderator I will be able to approve comments made by students, thus ensuring the safety of my students along with well thought out comments.  The home page will include a welcome to my students and parents with a thorough explanation for the purpose of this blog.

Customizations will include a general help page answering questions about how to navigate the blog, how to comment and other frequently asked questions.

Other customizations will appear in the sidebar.   There will be several useful links including;

• In depth letter to parents inviting them to be a part of our blog as well as what a blog is and our overall goal of use.
• Guidelines for digital citizenship.
• Rules for comments and use of the blog
• Safety guidelines

Several simple job aids will be given to the students.  The functions presented in the job aids will be taught and practiced together several times before students create independent comments.

• Commenting, editing, uploading an image, creating a link, spellcheck, all of the word processing skills used in creating a post.

My classroom blog will be designed for use by third grade students and parents.  Easy navigation, explicit instructions, helpful links and job aids are all necessary tools to make this blog successful.  When my students visit the classroom blog, I want them to first read any posts I have made.  Then depending on their assigned posting time they may be the first five to comment on what I have written or they may be commenting on their fellow classmate’s ideas.

Students will ideally make weekly posts about our discussion topic.  This process will be designed in the following way; students will comment in groups of five with the first group commenting on my original question.  The next group will most likely be scheduled to post the following day.  They will be required to comment on two of the five people who have already posted (assuming all five posts are aproved), the next group will then comment on the second five and so on.   Groups will be rotated so different groups comment first each week.

There will be instructions for students to read the thread from the beginning to build their understanding and effectively build on the ideas already shared.  Collaboration will take place on a daily basis with students reading each other’s work and adding on , refining, questioning or clarifying their thinking as well as that of their classmates.  Essentially I would like my classroom blog designed similar to our 700 blog with instructor led topics and each comment visible to each student.

In my ongoing attempts to understand the instructional design process, I have decided to create a classroom blog for my 3rd grade class.  We will be having literacy rich discussions around characters we read about, stories we learn from and our thinking about lessons learned.  All stories and texts will be read and discussed together during our allotted shared reading time, so all students will be familiar with the piece.

My users will be my 3rd grade class composed of 22-25 students of all varying learning styles, experiences and abilities.  I am a GATE cluster class this year, meaning I will have students across the spectrum of learning abilities, from GATE certified, which implies varying learning speeds and styles all the way to students reading at a 1st grade level and on to English Language Learners (ELL) new to our country.  Quite a challenging environment!  That is why I think this blog will succeed.  As moderator, I will be posting challenging and thought provoking questions to lead our literacy discussions.  To address the needs of students performing below grade level or my ELLS, I don’t believe they will have to comment on every post and they can easily be accommodated by shortened assignments or by working with someone else to develop their ideas.

Ideally, I would like for students to respond to each other as well as to me.  I believe motivation will not be a performance driver in this situation if the blog is presented correctly and expectations maintained.  Additionally, environment drivers can be avoided because I thankfully have a class set of net book computers we use on a daily basis therefore comments can be completed in class however, I will have to look into scheduling comment times so as to not have users encounter the “blocked” message.  Motivation should be great insights and grades but the idea of having the class vote on the best post does appeal to me.  The biggest performance driver I do anticipate is the knowledge/skills deficit.  Third graders, fairly new to technology and probably brand new to this type of response, will need to have the learning made into manageable chunks and have ideas and rubrics readily available to them.  I anticipate the first month of the year be devoted to modeling and discussion with many co-constructed posts.  This modeling will have to occur with each new genre of text.

Given sample responses, deeper thinking question ideas and strict but straightforward guidelines, my goal is for each student to use previous posts to enhance their understanding of a literary piece and share their thoughts on our blog post.

I never realized how easy it is to set up a blog and I’m excited there’s a site for educators.  I have a few ideas for potential projects to use this next school year.  They’re listed in order of interest.

1. Create a classroom literacy site.  I’m a firm believer that if someone can talk about their ideas they will be able to write about them.  I’d love to create a blog to facilitate literacy discussions in my classroom about themes, characters, likes, dislikes etc.  I would be the facilitator and start posts that each student would comment on, my posts as well as others.  Since I teach third grade where students are exploring the Internet and online learning more thoroughly our blog would need to be very clear and easy to use with the expectations broken down, practiced and discussed.  Third grade was the first year for the I21 technology initiative for my district so my class is equipped with personal net books for each student all connected to the district wireless network.  We would begin the blog together and each student would practice in class.  I’m thinking all required posts could be done in class in lieu of journaling.
2. Create a classroom blog to include classroom news, information, discussions etc.  I’m taking this idea from one of the award examples called “Blog Dogs” where the blog contained information and links for teachers and parents, videos of class plays and projects and even instructional videos.  I see it as being a classroom website only with interactivity from students and parents.  It would be very interesting to read parent posts.
3. Create a school blog for teachers where we can share ideas and discussions.  I envision a site where teachers can share ideas as well as friendly more social discussions.  I’m thinking it would work for a blog but I’d like to explore Schoology as well.

Hello My name is Vanessa.  I’ve been teaching for nine years with majority of my experience in fifth grade.  I’m now going on two years in third grade.

Can you Guess the lie?

1.  I was born and raised in San Diego and don’t plan on leaving any time soon.

2.  I’ve eaten a hundred year old egg.

3.  I love sky diving, I now have 100 dives!!