BPoirot's blog

Wait! Is it already the end of the year? I'm just finally figuring things out.  Now, I'm feeling ready to begin. 

 May 2010-after presentation on 4/22

So the final class has come and gone (as has April vacation) and it's time to relfect on the last meeting. We only had six people but still it was productive. It was clear that there are many ways to use the Young Writers site. I realized how lucky we are at Williston to have easy access to computers along with a great tech staff. This made it easier to try new things.

As we've worked with this site, it's been a struggle to inspire third and fourth graders to stick with an assignment through revisions to a final product. It's also been challenging to have the students provide helpful comments to their peers.

Having students make video comments seemed like the perfect way to add a sense of importance to what they had to say. My first attempt was with a flip camera as I didn't have a web cam. It was so interesting to video tape the comments. First I was clear about the focus of the comments. Students needed to refer back to the assignment for the first journal entry for the multimedia project about immigration. I saw a new level of concentration and a seriousness about choosing the right words to say in the video.

Still unclear about posting with a blog or a wiki. I started a wiki with a new plan for writing a response to text. It is posted if you scroll down the home page. If you post a blog, it's listed to the right under  'Recent  teacher blog posts.' That's where I usually look when I want to read what others are up to and to comment.

As I've had no comments to my wiki, I thought I'd go back to a blog so it's clearly listed.

Check it out. Go to Ewan McIntosh's blog (link on right of homepage) and scroll down to Jan. 12th to find the i movie Lost Generation. It's a pretty amazing palindrome.

 MJ described some of our progress with the 3/4's commenting on each others work. I agree that we are at the beginning of seeing a change in student writing due, in part, to comments from peers. This past week I worked with the third graders and realized that we were developing a common language based on the work done on the YWP site. When we first asked students to comment we decided to be very specific for fear that 3rd and 4th graders would revert to "I like it." "It's a good story."  Each student had to comment about the focus and about something they found interesting. 

Thanks to Geoff for coming to Williston. I had a conflict and couldn't attend Friday's meeting. Sorry to have missed it. I'll get caught up when I meet with Mary Jane on Monday.

We made some changes to our plan with Geoff's advice. He suggested we ask, "What interests you?" rather than the more general, "Was it interesting?" Rather than assigning names to comment about we used Geoff's idea of creating a sense of responsibility as a class. Every student should have two comments. It's easy to see who needs a comment. I do think some students will 'run with this' and others might not. I guess we need to check to be sure everyone is commenting. Using the web site seems to be a breeze for the kids.

Honestly, we have been pretty confused about how to begin. Geoff has kindly agreed to meet with us this week to help us figure things out. We had some glitches using the site and have been unclear about the best way to use it. This year, for the first time, I actually click on the help button. We used this yesterday and found it very helpful.

Mary Jane and I are sharing her 3rd and 4th graders. We are very fortunate to have lots of computers and great tech help. We will do some of the work within her classroom and at other times we will divide and conquer by having half of the class come to my Enrichment office with laptops.

Hey, I actually have an RSS feed! I had just read about this when I followed a link to our school newsletter. For the first time there was an option to set it up as a feed. I already have a google account so I now have newsletter come to Google Reader!

It all starts with logging in...

Fortunately, our kids have experience with technology. Despite this, trying to log in and go to email was not easy. I had emailed all of the kids the web sites for the ywp site and for the survey and the prompt. The problem seemed to be that the kids had been allowed to change passwords last year and some of them couldn't remember the new password.

Ultimately, we worked this out. Next the survey-I read one question at a time due to reading levels.

The kids were fine with the prompt. I was struck by the limitation of having only 10 minutes given typing skills. Oh, and there was the one student who said, "What just happened to everything I wrote?"

Plans for this course- To jump on new found enthusiasm for digital technology- I have a web page, a blog, a google doc and a group I just started on pbworks.com

As a new user to Facebook, I am beginning to understand a world that is becoming second nature for kids. I can't wait to go online to see if anyone has commented on something I've posted. I want to use what I learn in this class to help students feel that same eagerness about expressing themselves, having others comment and commenting to help others become better writers.

9/20 I haven't written about fears so I'll start there and then back to plans.