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.

Then, in January, you switched over to blogs. You have done so many posts including:

• one summarizing your oral history book.
• a review of the MS play, “The Tempest.”
• 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• a response to my (as yet unpublished) story about Margru and the Amistad.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).
• your Cinderella story.
• your podcast from Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
• posts on Plimoth Plantation and your Pilgrim Project.
• an article about our study of forced immigration.
• your Mourt’s Relation drawing.
• your All About Alice series of posts.
• book (and occasional movie) reviews.
• a post on The Wizard of Oz.

You did a lot that was truly amazing! Your blog replaced those composition books as a place to write about books and learning, a place to see what your classmates thought about things, 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? Would you like to do another blog next year? If so, what would you like it to be? (Ms. Nickles and I are thinking about perhaps doing one as a MS club next year involving school news.)

Thanks for being super bloggers this year!

Ms. Edinger