Roxi Thompson

We just wrapped up week 2, and students learned how to use several of the digital tools we will be using throughout the year. One of those tools was Kidblog , which is an online blogging platform for students. Kidblog allows students to share their voice with the world, but it also gives teachers and parents a certain amount of control so that we feel comfortable that students are safely contributing to the digital world.  For our first blog post, I had students choose a video on a topic that interested them from the SciShow Kids YouTube Channel . Their challenge was to watch the video and create a blog post that shared what they learned and a question they still had about that topic. Here are the directions I gave them: I created a blog post as a model for the students, but I also told them that their blog posts could look completely different from my post. I like when they find creative ways to change it up! You can see that in the directions I included severa...

We just wrapped up our first week of school! I really enjoyed meeting and getting to know our new 5th grade students! Here are some of the activities we did to start building our classroom culture and learn more about each other: "All About Me" Google Drawing Students learned how to use some of the basic features of Google Drawings by creating a Drawing about themselves. The basic requirements were that they include their name, a picture of themselves, and text/images that describe their personalities or interests. I created an example to give them an idea of what it could look like.  I used this activity last year, and I really enjoyed what my students created. However, I decided this year to give them more time to just play with and explore the tools in Google Drawing. I feel like this really paid off because students were able to discover how to use some of the tools and share with each other instead of just relying on me to show them how to use it.  ...

Last night was "Back to School Night" at my school, and we had a really great turnout!  Our 5th grade team decided last year to set up stations so that our students and parents had things to do instead of just standing in a long line waiting to shake hands with the teacher. We wanted to encourage them to interact with the other students and parents, and we also wanted to be able to circulate and have time to meet them and make some personal connections instead of repeating the same information 90 times.  We created a checklist to help guide parents through the stations. ( Click here if you would like to see it. ) Here is the basic set up in each classroom: Google Doc Station: We created a Google Form for parents to fill out information about their student, including allergies, volunteer availability, and anything they would like us to know about their student.  Notecard Station: Parents can write a note to their student that they will receive on the ...