About our Blog

Our Class Blog

In past years, this class blog was a source of information about the happenings in our classroom – weekly posts included class successes, weekly foci, weekly spelling lists and highlights of the past week.  Moving forward into the online learning classroom of 2020-21, the role of this blog will evolve as our class does.

During the 2015-16 school year, I made the leap from teacher information blog to student blogging for the very first time!  During that school year, I learned that student blogging tremendously increased student engagement and writing skills.  As well, families were able to follow and take part in the student writing process.  I am not yet sure what level I will take student blogging to this year.  I know, though, that I can’t wait to see students grow with technological literacy!   🙂  

• Blogging helps students learn how to create a positive digital footprint as they learn about cyber safety in a supervised environment.
• At the same time, they share their learning with an authentic audience.
• Learn more about blogs here.

Celebrate our Successes!

We invite you to share our learning through our blogs.

• Remember:  our blogs (and all other work!) are works in progress.
• Some of our work is polished and some of our work is in draft form.
• Please honour our attempts and do not dwell on our mistakes.  We are learning!
• Mistakes are valuable to us and we celebrate them because they shape the direction of our learning journey.

“Take chances.  Make mistakes.  That’s how you grow.” – Mary Tyler Moore

How to Get Involved

• I encourage students, teachers, friends and family to leave comments on our blog.
• Please remember – I moderate all comments before they become public on the blog.  That means that Ms Boychuk reads them first before adding them to the blog.  I check student writing for safety and to help me plan our next steps in writing/blogging learning.
• I encourage students to comment on other class/student blogs with teacher/parent supervision.
• I ask students to ask parents to proofread comments and posts that students write at home before they press submit.
• I ask parents who leave comments to please use their first name only to protect the privacy of their child.  Example:  please identify yourself as “Gracie – Suzy’s mom” instead of “Gracie Snowflake – Suzy’s mom.”

Never Give Away YAPPY

Y – Your full name

A – Addresses

P – Phone numbers

P – Passwords

Y – Your plans

Be a Responsible Digital Citizen

Check out this presentation by Mrs. Krebs about proper online behaviour:

As students learn how to make blog comments, here are some guidelines that I teach:

An appropriate and outstanding comment . . .

• shows that you read and thought about the whole post
• shows best spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammar (no “textese” please)
• uses strong, specific words and stays on topic
• is well-organized and follows letter form with a greeting, body, closing and signature
• is always positive, respectful and encouraging
• does NOT include students’ last names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, specific plans, dates of birth and other personal information
• has been proofread by the author and at least one other person before he/she submits it

Published comments might . . .

• compliment the writer
• give new information
• give a wish or a hope
• give and support your opinion
• show a connection with your life
• end with a question to cause more people to continue the conversation

Read our “How to Comment” page to learn more about commenting.

Read our “Quality Posts” page for more information on how to write great posts.

Your chance to add to the conversation . . .

• Are there any other purposes our class blog serves?  
• Do you have more ideas about commenting?