Ms. Naugle Thanks You!

Dear Dr. Strange,

I wanted to thank you and your students (future teachers) from the University of South Alabama for participating in the #comments4kids project. This is the first year I set up individual blogs for my 4th graders using kidblog.org. I teach math and social studies and debated over using some of my class time for blogging. I am so glad that I decided to go for it.

Writing is a life skill. Writing in every subject area is important. Writing helps the writer reflect on their learning. Writing blogs connects you with a real audience. My students are becoming better writers because they now know they have that real audience.

Each time one of my students receives a comment they beam and run up to me with their netbook to show it to me. (They forget that with the service we use, I moderate all comments.) They are especially happy when they are given a URL to the blog of their commenter and can comment back to them directly. My students are learning from questions included in their comments that they need to include more details in their writing. I have seen their posts getting longer and more detailed. I love that some of my most reluctant writers are spurred on to write because they too want to receive comments.

I was wondering if you would like to have your students Skype with my classes. We use Skype often to connect with other classes. I think it would be a great way to strengthen the connection our students have started to build. Let me know if you are interested. My Skype name is plnaugle.

Again thank you and your students so much for encouraging my 4th graders to keep on blogging!

Paula L. Naugle
Bissonet Plaza
Metairie, LA
Period 23
Ms. Naugle's 4th Period Math
Ms. Naugle's 5th Period Math