First Pen Pal Blog Post

Last Tuesday, students wrote to their pen pals for the first time! They wrote out their first entry on a piece of paper in the morning, and then in the afternoon I helped them type it into their blog. Since it was their first one, they introduced themselves and asked their pen pal some questions about themselves.

This is how the class blog turned out. You can see on the right each student has their own category they post into. All of the posts go into the home page as well.















All the pen pals responded within a day or so. A few of the pen pals even attached pictures to their responses! I ran through how to post with each student, so now they can do it independently outside of class.

Third Grade Pen Pals: Follow up on the Today's Meet Culture Lesson

On Tuesday, my class picked the person they want to pen pal from the Today's Meet group from a few weeks ago. I made a powerpoint with pictures of each pen pal, and we went back over the Today's Meet Feed from a few weeks ago to refresh over the responses each person gave.  As a refresher, they have 8 people to choose from, with 6 countries represented:
-Michal, Poland
-Karolina, Poland
-Doron, The Netherlands
-Daphne, The Netherlands
-Jasmine, Hong Kong
-Moeno, Japan
-Puja, UK
-Blanca, Spain

I pulled each student out and they told me their top two choices for pen pals. Using those requests, and the country they are studying for theme study this year as a guide, these were matches I made:

-Owen (Studying Mexico)- Michal

-James (Studying Brazil)- Michal

-Charlie N (Studying France)- Doron

-Charlie F (Studying China)- Jasmine

-Ava (Studying Japan)- Moeno

-Katie (Studying Morocco)- Karolina

-Amy (Studying Greece)- Daphne

Next Tuesday, the students will enroll is a Kidblog class. If you haven't used Kidblog before, here's a quick run down:

A teacher creates a "class", which generates a blog. From there, you can create categories for each student. The student can then post inside their category. When it comes time to publish their post, they can choose different audiences based on the privacy options the teacher makes in the blog settings. Once the students post, the instructor has to go in to approve the publication to the desired audience. Until then, it is only viewable by the instructor.  Guests can also enroll to participate in the blog using a join code, just like the students do. The process for a guest to publish a comment in the same as for a student to post; they comment then wait for instructor approval. This allows the teacher ultimate control for what goes up on the blog. 

The students will be posting their messages to their pen pals into their category in the blog, and the pen pals will comment their responses back. Next Tuesday, our goal is to get the students all enrolled in the class blog and have them write their first message to their pen pal.

Today's Meet Culture Lesson

Over the summer, I took a trip to a country called Sri Lanka. While I was there, I lived with people from all over the world. I was there for a month, and developed close friendships with these people. I still talk with them on a weekly basis. Right now, my third grade class is learning about countries and their different cultures for their theme study. We came up with the idea to "pen pal" with my friends to learn more about their cultures. Using a website called TodaysMeet, we asked them questions about what life was like for them in their countries. You can read the stream below. We had friends chatting from 5 different countries: Blanca (Spain), Puja (UK), Daphne and Doron (The Netherlands/ Holland), Moeno (Japan), and Michal and Karolina (Poland).