We’ve been nominated!

Yay, Kids!  We're nominated!

Yay, Kids! We’re nominated!

Hey Kids and Friends of Kids!

Thank you to our blogging buddies at Huzzah! for nominating us for Best Class Blog!  We are so very excited!  We are hoping that our blogging friends will vote for us by Dec. 15th by clicking on the badge above. After you have voted, check out the other nominees in categories such as: Best New Blog, Best Individual Blog, Best Student Blog- where our own Chrissy has been nominated, too!  Please vote for her as well!- Best Teacher Blog, Best Librarian Blog, Best Administrator Blog, Most Influential Blog Post, Lifetime Achievement and nine other categories.

Since beginning to blog two and a half years ago, we have learned a lot, and we have learned from the best, especially from the folks at Edublogs: Sue Waters and the Student Blogging Challenge.  I always say that I have purchased cars for tens of thousands of dollars and not received one hundredth of the customer service help that we have received from Edublogs for $30 a year.  Here is what makes the support team so great:  they get back to us within hours EVERY TIME!, they often fix whatever problem I am having, they provide very clear directions for a way I can fix my error, they do it all in a polite, positive, and efficient way, and they challenge us to improve our blog with ten weeks of tasks, twice a year.

From the outstanding class blogs we interact with, we have learned how to-

We are so honored to be in the company of these all-around outstanding blogs and the teachers behind them.  Please take a moment to VISIT THESE BLOGS, and the many others who were nominated, and then leave a quality comment for at least one class or one student.  Blogging is all about reading, writing, thinking, learning, and sharing.  Let’s do it!

 

Flattening Classroom Walls!

After two years of blogging, and exchanging a plethora of comments with classes around the world from Canada, to New Zealand, to the heartland of America, we finally connected via Skype with a class in Connecticut, Mrs. Emerick’s 6th grade wave riders!  This visit is the epitome, so far!, of our blogging adventure.  We spent two half hour sessions chatting with our blogging buddies about summer reading books, sports, band, school uniforms, book trailers, brain teasers, Genius Hour, and of course, blogging!

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Mrs. Emerick on our Apple t.v. during our Skype visit

Capturing my students on the iPad as we Skype with Mrs. Emerick's class.

Capturing my students on the iPad as we Skype with Mrs. Emerick’s class.

We learned that we have a lot in common:

  • The book we read for summer last year, A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park, is what Mrs. Emerick’s students will read this summer!
  • We love to play sports and music.
  • We love blogging and Skyping!
  • We don’t love homework (teachers included).

We learned we have a few differences:

  • In Connecticut, lacrosse is favorite sport; in Florida soccer reigns supreme.
  • Mrs. Emerick’s class created book trailers on Animoto; Mrs. Donofrio’s class will learn how to create book trailers on Animoto.
  • The Floridians are on summer vacation now!  The New Englanders have to wait until June 23rd.

 

Next year we hope to Skype more often.  In addition to our high tech pen pal system, i.e. blogging, we will put the Pony Express to work as well and send each other some postcards this summer.  We are also hoping to share in each other’s curricula in new ways.

Participating in blogging and Skyping makes me think about all the ways education has changed since I was a middle school student in the early 1980s.   We barely knew what schools around the block were doing, never mind across the country or around the world!  The biggest technological advancements were erasable pens and dustless chalk.   Grades came home on papers in schoolbags.  Now we can visit schools around the world and engage with them through blogging, Vimeo, Skype, YouTube, and Educreations, among other technologies.  Parents can much more actively participate in their children’s learning.  Today I used my iPad to email a mom a video of her daughter participating in a Chinese tea and speaking Chinese.  Another mom asked me to post my grammar lessons which we record on Educreations on the blog next year.

Here is a photo of a classroom, 1978, and another now 2014.  I am in both photos!  Can you find me?

Mrs. Donofrio- Grade 5, 1978.  Sister Lois taught our class "nitty gritty grammar".

Mrs. Donofrio- Grade 5, 1978. Sister Lois taught our class “nitty gritty grammar”

Mrs. Donofrio-language arts teacher grade 7, 2014.

Mrs. Donofrio-language arts teacher grade 7, 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What changes do you see in teaching and learning over the last 30 years?  Ask your parents to comment also!

Thank you to Mrs. Emerick and her 6th graders for helping us end our school year so fantastically!  The walls are tumbling down!

 

Silver and Gold

Welcome to the spring 2014 Student Blogging Challenge! (Hey, Kids! register here. )We hope to find some new friends and revisit some old friends this spring. I am reminded of a Girl Scout song I learned years ago, “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

Last year, we met some blogging buddies at Huzzah! and in Mrs. Krebs’ class.

This year, we have recently been introduced to some students in the classes of Mrs. Rovira and Mrs. Emerick .  We hope these students will become our new blogging buddies, a.k.a. high tech pen pals.

Whether we call them friends, buddies, or pals, we hope to find more of them through this spring’s Student Blogging Challenge.

Making friends around the world

Making friends around the world

 

Making friends through service

Making friends through service

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”
Muhammad Ali

 

What makes your best friend “the best”? 

 

 

 

 

Meeting new friends

Hey Kids!

We’d like to introduce everyone to some new blogging buddies, Mrs. Rovira’s 7th grade class in Southern California.  They are middle school students and are looking to connect with other student bloggers.

Mrs. Rovira's blog 001

After reading some posts on their blog, I know that Mrs. Rovira’s class is reading Red Scarf Girl.  I also learned that they are from Orange County, a place I’ve never been.

Here is a blogging challenge for our new and old friends:  What book do you like, and what place would you like to visit?   I hope all our family members will participate as part of our last week of Family Blogging Month.

Mrs. Donofrio’s picks:  Gone With the Wind– when I read this book as a sophomore in high school, I’d set my alarm for 5 am so I could read before school.  This year, 31 years after I read the book, we are planning a summer vacation to Atlanta, the setting of GWTW, and I can’t wait!

The White House
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Steve Driskell via Compfight

 

Student Blogging Challenge Week 4

Welcome to Week 4 of the Student Blogging Challenge!  This week you have a “freebie” and can write about anything you’d like.  Photos with attribution are encouraged.  

Perhaps some of you will write about Guys and Dolls.  GREAT JOB by everyone in the cast!  I am so proud of you!  I wish I could post a photo, but I don’t want to break the copyright law.Be seeing you

Here’s the link to Challenge #3. Previous posts on our class blog have links to Challenges 1 and 2. Please make sure you have completed at least one challenge. Check out the blogs of your schoolmates who have been noticed in the challenges! Check out your friends’ blogs. Read the list of kids around the globe who are participating in the challenge and visit one of their blogs. Leave a grammatically correct, thoughtful comment with a question and a link to your blog so that you can continue the conversation. Add a Student Blogging Challenge Widget to your sidebar.

Let me know when you have 100 visitors.  That is our third blogging goal this year.  When we reach our goal, we’ll plan our third blogging party!

Photo Credit: Olivander via Compfight cc

Student Blogging Challenges

Hey, Kids!

Kudos to Franklin, John, Cogan, and Hannah for completing the Blogging Challenge for week 1.  You kids chose interesting people and thought up very intriguing questions.  I was impressed!  

In light of the novel we are reading this month, Under the Blood Red Sun,  and in response to the Blogging Challenge from week 1, here is a letter written by an unnamed sailor from Pearl Harbor.   Think about what we have read/learned about the attack so far, and read this letter. 

 
Memories of Attack on Pearl Harbor, Richard Hall, Page 2 of 2

Photo Credit: Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections via Compfight cc

What questions would you ask this soldier? 

Here is the link to Blogging Challenge Week 2.  You have lots of options, but one is to write about something you are passionate about.  I’ll be working on this challenge, too!  Deadline is next Sunday.  Make sure you check out some of the blogs from other students around the world who are participating as well.  Have fun!  I’m looking forward to reading your posts.

Parade Magazine ran their annual “What People Earn” issue this week.  They included a 27-year-old blogger who makes $18,000 a year.  That could be you! 

What do you think are the pros and cons of blogging for a living?

Blogging Challenges

Winners of First Annual Family Blogging Month Challenge

We instituted Family Blogging Month in February here at Hey, Kids!  Each week we entered the names of everyone whose family member or friend commented on his/her blog.  On Fridays in February, we drew the name of one lucky winner who received a few tasty treats and a No Homework Pass for language arts as well.  At the end of the month, we gave prizes to the students with the:

  •  Most Visitors (567)
  • Most Comments (200)
  • Farthest Visitor (Australia- multiple winners in this category.  We had to draw a name again.)

These lucky winners received the No Homework Pass, some treats, AND a No Uniform Pass to use at their discretion.

Right on the heels of February’s Family Blogging Month is the Student Blogging Challenge in March.  All my Kids should click on the link and write about this month’s challenge on their blogs.  We hope to make some stellar connections with new friends around the globe. 

What contests have you entered?  What prizes have you won?