Mrs. Yollis' 3rd grade picture
I have received these emails from Mrs. Yollis' students. The students included links to their personal blogs. The links are now in the C4K #10 Doc. They can also be found in the comments for the post How To Make A Book Trailer.
Each of you has been assigned to one of the five students who left comments for EDM310. I have used two different posts for each student. Be sure you PROOFREAD your comment. As Jaden said, we "want quality comments." Note that the italics are his!
Read all of the comments below BEFORE you leave your C4K #10 comment!
From Hannah, Grace, and Adia
Dear EDM310 class,
We are Hannah, Grace, and Adia from Mrs. Yollis' third grade class.
Thank you for leaving us so many quality comments on our class blog. Mrs. Yollis viewed all of your comments, and since you have 100+ students in your class, our teacher admitted that she could not possibly get back to every single one. Some of us stayed inside during lunch for charting since it's Family Blogging Month, and most of the comments that we saw were from you!
The reason we have a class blog is...
•It's a great way to "meet" people around the world. An advantage is that we make new friends, and we also get to learn about their country, state, province, or territory.
•We get to also learn about different subjects such as quality commenting. Here is an example: If Mrs. Yollis posted about different quality comments, we would learn about how to write them.
•What we also learn from blogging is that it improves our reading and writing skills. For example, writing a comment on fads helps us with writing skills, and reading comments that other people write helps our reading skills.
All three of us have earned student blogs. Here is how we earned them...
•Good behavior in class.
•Responsibility.
•Respect.
•Good attitude in class.
•Sometimes, if you are one of the top three winners in Family Blogging Month, you earn a blog by your accomplishment, but this only happened with Hannah, Miriam, and Adia.
•Last but not least, amazing quality comments. (Not one, but a lot.)
We do encourage you to get a class blog if you become a teacher. It is super fun! Here are the reasons why...
•You can get a cute and adorable Voki. Grace's is Isabella, a dog, Hannah's is a girl, and Adia's is a girl also.
•You get a bunch of visitors.
•You get many comments.
•There can be fun and exciting activities on your blog. Here is an example: Adia has an activity called Babble of The Month.
Warmly,
Hannah, Grace, and Adia ♔
From Miriam (Victoria)
Dear EDM310 class,
My name is Miriam and I am a third grade student in Mrs. Yollis' class. Mrs. Yollis shared with us your comments and told us about your class blog.
We use a class blog to share with parents and friends about what we learn in school. Some kids who are good commenters were able to have their own blog.
I am lucky to have my own blog called Miriams Magical Moments.
I hope you visit.
Enjoy blogging,
Miriam
From Jaden
Dear EDM310,
My name is Jaden, and I am in Mrs. Yollis' third grade class in California. I'm happy that I am able to comment with college-level students! When I look through your posts, I think I am going to learn a few new words.
As Miriam said, some students earned their own blogs. I earned my blog by writing quality comments on blogs and having good behavior in class. My blog is called Jaden's Awesome Blog.
I hope some of your students write quality comments on my blog. :-)
I have some advice for all of you. You should always check your comments before you press publish. Sometimes it might not say what you think it says. Your thoughts should be clear.
Sincerely,
Jaden
Posts
I think Jaden's name is spelled incorrectly at the beginning of her comment (spelled Jarden) =)
ReplyDeleteThis is simply amazing! Blogging is working wonders for these students. What a great motivation for us to get a class blog for our future students!!
ReplyDeleteThe link to Mrs. Yollis' blog is not working. There are 2 http(s) in the web address. Just thought I would let you know.
ReplyDeleteKelly
I love how the students are the ones thanking our class for visiting and leaving comments on their blogs rather than Mrs.Yollis herself. It really does makes it more personal. Her students are doing a great job!
ReplyDeleteLooks like some of the posters, are still reeling from the metaphor blog. I don't care how this kid spells his name, and I'm not going to nick-pick Mrs. Yollis' web address. You didn't ask us to do that. I'm thinking, you only wanted a "good comment", thats been re-checked, before we publish it. If I'm wrong, I'll live with it. I'm going to go out on a limb, and say Jadens' post, had no trickery intent. Instead, I believe it was an honest attempt by a kid, who was showing his appreciation, for support, from college students. That being said, I feel honored to have been apart of Mrs. Yollis and her third grade class. I wish them all the luck, and success. I'm going to miss them.
ReplyDeleteDear EDM 310 students,
ReplyDeleteIt has been a pleasure having all of you visit our third grade blog, and we really appreciate your kind words of support!
It is critical to me that I incorporate new tools in my classroom. As you can see, blogging has taken my students to another level with learning. We have an authentic audience for our writing and fabulous global classroom connections that make for a rich online learning community for all. Not only are the traditional academic skills covered, but the important new concepts of managing one's digital footprint and practicing Internet safety are reinforced on a daily basis.
Blogger limits the comments to 4,096 characters, so I’ll do a separate comment answering some questions that were left on our blog.
☺
Mrs. Y♥llis
@ Samantha Fleming,
ReplyDeleteYou asked about Family Blogging Month. I created the idea of Family Blogging Month because I could see that a few parents were participating, but not as many as I wanted. Dedicating an entire month to the project provided a reasonable amount of time for a parent to comment. In addition, even though I stated that the blog is for everyone when I spoke to the parents at Back to School Night, many did not participate. Family Blogging Month is a formal invitation to join the online learning community. It has had a big impact on parent participation.
@ Hilary Rolin,
“I love how involved the parents and friends of your students are. Are they always this involved or has this been a result of Family Blogging Month?” The formal invitation to Family Blogging Month really helps. We run two during the school year. One is in November, when we have a block of time off for Thanksgiving and one in the spring.
@ Christina Henson,
“I am very curious about your family blog participation. Did you have an initial ‘open house’ in your classroom for the parents to learn blogging, or did the children teach the parents how to blog?” The children teach their parents. Plus, the How to Comment video I created helps new bloggers figure out how to leave a comment.
@Monsenya Chatman,
“…how can I motivate my family members to comment on my class's posts?” Each time I publish a post, I send an email to parents alerting them. I also include a gadget in the sidebar to subscribe to our blog by email.
@ Kimberly Holland,
You asked, “I plan on having my own class blog someday. However, I am unsure where to start, do you have any advice?”
I’m happy to hear that you are considering a class blog. My advice to you is to start. Don’t feel like you have to know everything. When I started, I knew very little about blogging. I’d hoped to publish a few stories and have some parent participation. I gradually learned new skills and expanded my use of the blog. Visiting other class blogs and developing professional relationships with other teachers really helps.
It is also a good idea to try to comment back to your readers. That helps build friendships and connections. I try to encourage my students to help with that so it makes it more of a class blog than my blog.
@ Miles Bubbett,
“Are you planning on any other activities that will bring others into the classroom?”
I am always looking for new ways to include others. This year we joined with three other classes in a project called Quad-Blogging. The idea was to bring four classes together to make deeper connections. One blog was “featured” per week. That has been a successful way to bring others in. I’m also interested in Skyping with experts, but haven’t tried that one yet!
@ Megan Simmons,
“Why do you think having instructions on how to comment correctly increases the amount of comments you receive?” Many adults have never read a blog or left a comment. Having the How to Comment video helps visitors learn how to comment. The ability to stop the video or watch it a second time really helps.
@ Kelly Evans,
“As a future teacher, I am very interested in having my own classroom blog and was wondering, how often do you all get to blog? Do you have a set time of day to do it?” We start every morning with the blog. I give about 15-30 minutes per day. At the beginning of the year, we focus all of our attention on assessing comments. Discussing if they are a 1-point comment or a 2-point comment helps improve the quality. Later in the year, we do less evaluating and more reading and exploring other blogs.
I encourage all of you to visit blogs and leave lots of comments. We all make errors from time to time and that is part of being human. However, do take the time to proofread your comments and make your digital footprint the best it can be.
Good luck to everyone! If you have any other questions, let me know here and I’ll try to get back to you quickly.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Y♥llis
Woodie,
ReplyDeleteI was not "nick-pick"ing the post! I was simply letting Dr. Strange know that the link was not working. If the link is broken, then it will not link us to the connected page. I am quite sure Dr. Strange didn't mind my observation.