Family Friendly

Photo of Family Guitar Hero by Sheri Edwards

Photo of Family Guitar Hero by Sheri Edwards

This blog and our class blog are family friendly.

We welcome families to read and respond just as our students do. As part of our blogging challenge, teacher bloggers were asked to create a parent handout to guide families in the purposes of and the participation in our class blog.

What do families need to know?

The Class

Writing
Ms Edwards
Consider  Create  Connect  Collaborate

The Home Page and Blog

http://write.nsdeagles.org Home Page

https://whatelse.edublogs.org The Teacher Blog
http://eagleswrite.edublogs.org The Class Blog

The Purpose

Eagles Blog
Have you noticed the world has changed?
Or the changes in reading and writing?

  • We are Wandering Wordsmiths; Emerging Experts.
  • What else could we write? How else could we say it better?
  • Our Blog: a place to enhance written discourse and media citizenship among students.

Teaching and learning are social activities; today’s kids are connected in ways that no adult over twenty-five could have imagined just five years ago. Students today enjoy the connectedness of social networking; it is part of their very being. Our goal is to bring instruction into that cloud to teach the content required in ways that inspire online responsibility and ethics in this new, very public world.

What is a blog?

A log is like a journal, a place to express your ideas. A web-log is a journal on the world wide web (www), the Internet.  A blog is short for “web-log.” It’s purpose is to share ideas with others to add to an ongoing conversation about topics of interest to the “blogger.” Others then comment on that blog so they can add more to the conversation.
Why blog?
In this changed world, our students will be expected to participate online in responsible ways. Education now includes guiding students in this new read-write web. That’s right, the “internet” is now not only readable, it’s writable.

Our students learn to navigate safely and responsibly through the web by participating in blogs and wikis on topics of interest to them. They research and consider others’ ideas, create their own ideas on blogs, connect to others in comments, and collaborate to clarify and extend the conversation about their topics.

Through these connections, students apply their research and social skills to clearly write their ideas, converse with others in positive and supportive ways, and continue the conversation that adds knowledge and solutions to issues that concern them.
They create an online identity of which they can be proud citizens of this changed world.

How Can Families Participate?

Will You join us?

  • Read

https://whatelse.edublogs.org
The Teacher Blog
http://eagleswrite.edublogs.org
The Class Blog

  • Subscribesubscribeamail

In the left column, just enter your email address in the “Subscribe” area. You will receive an email when changes occur.

  • Read the blog’s pages for more information

thepages

  • Comment commentbox2

Comments continue the conversation. We love them!  Just click “Comments” under the title of the blog post. Please only use your first name.

Note to students:

Remember: A blog comment is your footprint… a path back to you… prepare your path wisely.

  • View Categoriescategories2

Look for your student’s name under categories to discover their posts. Just click the drop-down menu.

How will I introduce and welcome families?

First, my students will follow what they need to do to begin blogging. Expected homework is to share what they do, including the internet safety guidelines they follow.

Second, once students begin their own blogging, I will ask them to learn and explain the purpose and participation in their own words.

Third, I’ll share the handouts (see below) with families at parent conferences and as a homework task. I’ve always wanted to have an “Open House”  in our writing classroom, such that students prepare presentations to share with families any time they visit. We could schedule special “Open House Days” as well. Our regular lessons and projects would continue as the students of the attending families simply take them to their desk or computer and share the presentation of our work to them. This helps families and their schedules.

So, students:

What are you learning? What will you share? Prepare an agenda and artifacts. Let’s start our welcome to families to share our learning in writing class.

And families, What do you want to know and see? We look forward to learning your ideas as you read about ours.


The family handout:

parent blog info p1

parent info blog p2

3 Comments

on “Family Friendly
3 Comments on “Family Friendly
  1. Ms. Edwards,
    This blog entry is a great way to introduce parents to blogging, show them how they can stay connected and invite them to participate! Your family handout is terrific! How did you create them? I love the way they look!

    Thank you for your thoughtful comment on my blog, Looking Glass, we will keep an eye on your blog!

    • Thank you Aimee, I created the handout on my Mac, using Pages in iWork. It’s a layout program as much as a word processing program. The images are created in Snagit by TechSmith (both windows and mac versions), which is a screen capture app that allows editing. Those are added to the Pages document. Thanks for stopping by.

  2. Pingback: Blog with students – Visit these Weeks 3/4 | Teacher Challenge

Comments are closed.