Blogging - Blogging - Blogging

I love blogging so much that I am going to teach my kinders to blog!! We are fortunate enough to have 6 ipads per classroom and might even be getting more! There is a free app called Kid Blog. It is so easy to use and it it FREE!  The app is very user friendly. You sign up using your school email address and create a class name. You can have multiple classes for if you teach more then one class. After, signing up you create an account for each student in your class, giving them a user name ... I just use my students first name and a password.. I keep mine very simple and the same for each of my kiddos. This way they find it easy to remember and log in. Each child can have a little avatar for their profile. Kid blog gives some cute images for these or you can upload your own images for each child. I plan on adding kid clip art that looks similar to each of my student to make it more personal. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe I will do it next week in between conferences?

Now don't worry, Kid blog is different then the blogging we do. It is completely safe and private. You can only view these blogs if you are a member of the group. No one from the public has access to the children's blogging or the posts you as the teacher make. You can not Google search for them and no one can comment on them unless you invite them to join your classroom group.

You might be asking your self how would you use Kid Blog

 in your classroom. Well here is how...

1. It is a great way to introduce technology into your classroom. It allows you to teach your students up to date practices in technology. At the same time it gives my kinders a great way to practice typing and letter recognition.

2. I use Kid Blog during centers. My kids have to blog before doing an educational game. The best part is the teacher creates the posts. It allow me to assess my children in any topic I want and I am able to use it as an online portfolio that can show administration and parents how my student are progressing throughout the year. Our first post was for the children to type their first and last name. I taught them how to log in and out, the way to capitalize letter s on an iPad,  and how to type a finger space in between their words.

3. Each week I will have my kiddos type in the weeks sight word as a fun reinforcement. This can also be use for word families and other phonemic awareness patterns. 

4. Kid Blog allows you to leave open ended questions for your children to respond to. Next week one of my posts will be What are you thankful for? My kinders will need to use sight words and their sound map to create a sentence to write about something they are thankful for. As the school year goes on Kid Blog will be a great tool for Writers Workshop. It will be another way for student to publish a piece of the writing and share it with others.

5. Comments - Kid blog allows students to make their own posts as well and any one from the class can respond to it. It's a great way for student to communicate and learn how to respond to other peoples thoughts and ideas. Once, my kids are more comfortable with using the app we will link up with another Kindergarten classroom in district and be iPad pals!

As the teacher, you are the moderator, any comment posted by a student needs to be approved by you before it is published on the blog. You can also comment on your students posts. I was able to tell each child that they did a great job typing their name and remind them to use finger spaces or capital letter if they forgot! My kids are really excited to read my comments that I write to them over the weekend!

So what are you waiting for! Go create our own account and let me know how you use it. I am still new to it and would love more ideas for posts and having my kinders explore more with technology!

Here is what the app looks like. Click below to sign up!

Label . Label . Label

Writers Workshop is probably my favorite thing to teach during the day. Most kindergarteners come in barely knowing how to write their name properly, yet alone a full sentence! It can be a challenge to jump into Writers Workshop, but it should be done the first few weeks of school! I start writers workshop the 3rd full week, so my kinders get into a routine first and then we can begin the exploration to becoming authors!

We start off by making our individual Writers Workshop folders. My students take them home as a project and decorate their folder with things they love and pictures of them and their family. I make labels for the inside, for easy use. Green = Still in Progress Red = Completed

We start by learning about the different types of papers and writing materials and where we can find the writing center in our classroom. We practice getting our folders and returning them to the correct basket where they belong.

In the beginning of Writers Workshop I like to begin the focus on labeling our pictures. This puts my kinders minds at ease. They always go on and on about not knowing how to write and instead of insisting that they try to sound out the words they are saying I simply tell them to LABEL their picture.

I like to introduce labeling in a fun and silly way so we can refer to it all year long!!

We begin by labeling the teacher!! We do this using post it notes that I label ahead of time.

After we label the teacher, I put up my drawing. I also photo copy my drawing for each child to have the exact same drawing in front of them to label along with me. We go through each item in the picture and say it over and over to hear the beginning sound of that word. We look at our sound map to help us incase we don't know the sound of the letter.

 

My kiddies LOVE LOVE LOVE to use the sound map. We have a poster size version on magnets for me to move around the room anytime we need it. I also give the kids a copy of their own sound map, they color in and make "their own". They keep it in the Writers Workshop folder. It is there to help them figure out letter sounds and them better writers. We also say our sound map chant every morning while doing our calendar routine!

When we finished labeling the teachers drawing my kids colored in the drawing and were encouraged to add their own details to the picture, like a frog sitting in the pond and label the new additions.

Here is a freebie for you to enjoy!! This is the letter I send home to my students parents. I like to try to make the directions for decorating the folders as clear as possible. The folders are meant to spark ideas of topics during Writers Workshop.