Yay! I'm back!!! I bet you've wondered where I've been?
OK. So I'm probably not THAT important and most likely my blog is not the first place you visit when you jump online, BUT... just in case you're wondering, I'll let you know what I've been up to. I finished the school year, watched my daughter receive her high school diploma, took one day off - then literally leapt back into the classroom to teach summer school. Talk about moving full force with little jet fuel. I've been "out of the classroom" as a tech partner for two years. Could I really have forgotten how much thinking and time goes into running a classroom? To top it off, I agreed to teach kindergarten/ first grade remedial reading, known as 10th month. Let me also make you aware, I haven't kindergaten or first grade in 14 years. I have though, in the past two years, worked with with some pretty fantastic kindergarten and first grade teachers using technology, and am thankful for their guidance. I started the week gathering books at their reading level, supplying fun writing materials, and games. That lasted all but one hour and I had 3 more to go. Leading a guided reading group was difficult because little ones, that I wasn't sitting and reading with, lacked stamina to work independently. It was a long, long, LONG morning. The next day, I created a blog and added a symbaloo loaded with interactive reading and skill practice sites. The kids loved it! I was finally able to sit and read with all groups. By day 3, all kiddos were logging into their blog, navigating to the main page, finding the symbaloo, and practicing on sites I had assigned to them. On day 4, the kids were asking to design their own blog pages. I gave them paper and asked them draw themselves. No problems with that. Then I asked them to write some words that described them. That was a challenge! How do I write on these lines? How do I spell football? I don't like to write! Tears from two little guys :0( but we plugged away. On day 5, we started the morning learning how to start at the red line of our notebook paper, write left to right on the lines, skip a line so it was easier to read, start with a capital letter, and end with a period. It took an hour to write those sentences- but we did it! The last hour of the day, we met up with the 2nd-5th graders to create avatars and put our bios on the blog. It went amazing well. Now, the kids are eager to get on their blogs- they read, write, practice with games and even watch selected videos. We've had discussions about digital citizenship and they respect the internet. What started out as one word or sentence is now 3-6 and they look forward to publishing. We really could use more comments though- check us out!
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