Dear Edinger House,
You all took to blogs this year like ducks to water! I can’t believe how easily you learned how to write posts, make links, podcasts, stick in images, and so much more! Hopefully, this won’t be your last chance to blog — in fact, I’m hoping some of you will be able to blog again as early as next year. So today I want you to reflect on the blogging experience. Begin by checking that you have all your posts published. Some of you still have posts in draft that you need to finish and publish. Next go through your posts and think about what you learned doing them. What did you especially like? What did you not like? What were your favorite parts of doing a blog? Would you like to do another blog next year? If so, what would you like it to be? (You might want to link to some of your favorite posts as you do this.)
Thanks for being super bloggers this year!
Ms. Edinger
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.
As you know, that is from the mysterious first note found by Miranda in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, the amazing book I just finished reading to you. It was very cool to sneak peaks at your faces yesterday as I read aloud the last part — you were absolutely riveted as all the different threads were tied up. And so today it is your turn — to write your own letters about this remarkable book — on your blogs. My hope is that you will all write thoughtful and interesting ones that I can mention on my blog so that others interested in how children respond to the book will come to see and read them (and, hopefully, comment as well).
First of all, a fun tidbit. The book takes place, as you know, in 1979 and the television show, $20,000 Pyramid plays a major part in the story. Go here to see a clip of the original show and then come back….
Back? Good. Now here are a few ideas of things to consider for your blog post —we’ll add a few more today as well.
- The title — what do you think of it? Would there be a better one? (One person I know suggested The Laughing Man —what do you think of that?)
- The cover — some don’t like it. Do you? Do you want to draw a better one and post it on your blog? Explain why it is what it is.
- Chapter titles are mostly “Things that…” which is the way to do your answer for The $20,000 Pyramid.
- How did you feel about it being SO mysterious? Were you able to wait until all became clear?
- Veil metaphor — when was it lifted for you?
- Wrinkle in Time
- For kids who are comfortable with many different threads and things going on all at once.
Okay, we think you are ready to open your blogs to the world! But before this you need to do one more thing — clean house! Go through all of your posts and comments and make sure that you have made all the corrections suggested in the comments. Pay special attention to spelling, punctuation, and capitalization! Since readers may come to your blog who don’t know you, these sorts of mistakes may give them an impression of you that you don’t want. Ms. Nickles will let you know on Friday if she thinks your blog is spic and span and ready for viewing!
1. Login into FirstClass and go to the Cindy Stories conference.
2. Find your Cindy story and drag it onto the desktop.
3. Open the story and then go to your blog to start a new post.
4. Then, copy your story (not your name) and paste it into your post.
5. Separate your paragraphs by skipping a line for each new paragraph. (Don’t forget to save!) (You can do this later too.)
6. Find a passage in your story to record.
7. Go back to FirstClass and open a new message. Copy the passage into message.
8. Record your Cindy Story passage (see the steps here on the Email FAQ page).
9. Finally, add your new audio file to your Cindy Story blog post.
Now that you have some basic information about blogging, you are going to write a post of your own.
Your job is to first study one of last year’s student blogs. ( You will be assigned one randomly.) Some of the things you might want to consider are:
What did they write about?
What can you learn about blogging from this person’s blog?
What did they use besides words?
How often did they write?
What sort of comments did they get?
What is one of your favorite posts and why?
What did you learn from this person’s blog that will help you when you do your own?
After studying this blog, your job is to write a good paragraph (or more, if you like) describing this blog and telling what you learned from it. It should have that a good topic sentence, at least three additional sentences, and a great concluding sentence. Then you should check for punctuation , sense, capitals, and spelling (and also use the spell check). Don’t forget to preview it!
Here are your blog assignments:
Dear Edinger House,
At the very beginning of the year I gave each of you a composition book and a letter from me. In it I explained that we would be writing letters back and forth to each other in that journal and here was your first one from me. You all wrote me back — wonderful letters telling me about your summers, about the sort of learners you are, books you liked, and so on. For the next few months we continued to write back and forth. You wrote about books you were reading. who you thought was the hero of Charlotte’s Web, what you would take with you if you had to emigrate, and more.
In December I decided that instead of you writing me, you should write your classmates. So you did — and then you each read those letters and wrote comments in the journals. And as you did that, it struck me that what you were doing was just like blogging! And with that I decided I wanted you each to have a blog. And so we began.
You did so many posts including:
- one summarizing your oral history book
- reviews of books (including the one you did on amazon.com)
- review of the MS play, “Half a Sixpence”
- a joint post with your third grade buddy about their New Orleans project
- a response to my (as yet unpublished) story about Margru and the Amistad
- your wonderful Amistad poems (and collages) after working with Natasha Trethaway
- some posts about other kids’ blogs (from all over the world)
- your Cinderella story
- posts on what you expected of Plimoth Plantation and what it ended up being like
- an article about our study of forced immigration
- your Mourt’s Relation drawing
- a post on whether the MGM movie of The Wizard of Oz was a good adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s book
Whew! We did a lot and it was truly amazing! Your blog replaced those composition books as a place to write about books and learning, it became a place to see what your classmates thought about things and about other kids around the world as well, it became a place to publish stories, and to write so much about so many things. It has been great!
And so for your final post of this year I want you to think through what doing the blog meant to you. What did you learn from doing it? What did you like? What did you not like? What were your favorite parts of doing a blog? Do you want to continue? Why?
Hopefully you will be able to continue these next year, if you want to. Blogs for kids your age are still such a new thing that it depends on how your teachers next year feel about it. Certainly you will still be able to go and look at your blog as much as you want; you just won’t be able to post for the time being.
Thanks for being super bloggers this year!
Ms. Edinger