Author: 1fineteacher

To those of you who have been in education for any length of time, it comes as no suprise to you that family involvement in school has been identified as a key predictor of students success.

When I asked my superintendent to write about his thought on parent communication, this is what he had to say: “Communication between parents and teachers is a big part of student success. There is no doubt that when teachers and parents work together student performance will increase.  The lines of communication must be open early in the school year. Letters of introduction to the home should be sent even prior to the 1st day. When teachers make positive phone calls early on, it makes the negative phone calls later easier.  When parents know what the Expectations and Objectives are they can provide more support for their child at home. ” -Chris Fine, Superintendent Lathrop RII School District.

I agree that parent involvement is a big part of student success. Technology has helped make communicating with parents much easier. For years we have communicated the happenings in our classrooms through newsletters that we photocopied and sent home. Now we can send those same letters through email, we can attach them to our blog page, or even blog about what is going on in our classrooms. Seesaw, the app that I blogged about last week, has a parent communication program in it that parents can create feedback to their children about their online journal via the web. A few photos follow showing the way Seesaw helps teachers invite parents to follow their child’s journal.

Here’s a Power Point book report that one of my kids completed! It sure makes me want to read the book!

My students have been reading so many books in The Reading Workshop that I decided that they needed to share some of their favorites with their fellow classmates. I asked them to tell a little about the book, giving just enough exciting information to make the others want to read it too. They had a lot of fun adding suspense to their reports, and as they presented them to their classmates everyone was afraid that someone would give away their ending! Of course no one did!

In addition to the book report above, here are a few pictures of the kids preparing their reports:

As I add these pictures of my students, I do want do mention the importance of digital ethics and our moral obligations as teachers to keep our children safe while they are using technology. One point is that not all parents agree to having their children’s pictures on the internet, so it is our obligation to check the internet agreements that all parents sign to see which of those will and will not allow for photos of their children to be posted. My second point is that we as teachers have an obligation to educate our students about internet safety and to monitor what they are doing on the digital devices that they are using.

This week was an exciting week in my classroom! I introduced a new (to us) app to my students called Seesaw and they loved it! Seesaw is a student driven portfolio app that encourages student engagement. Seesaw has a very large activity library available to teachers grades PK-12 in many different subject area and topics. The first thing I had my students do was an activity where they got to take a picture of themselves with the camera on their computer and then write words that described themselves to place around the picture. The directions on the program led the kids through the activity. I have assigned them several different math activities since, and they can’t wait to do the work each day! Since seesaw is online, it is so much more fun for them than doing a worksheet! The fact that it provides me with so many activities helps me with prep time! If I can’t find an activity that I feel is appropriate for my students, I can create one for the activity bank! The most exciting thing about Seesaw is, it is free for teachers!

check out Seesaw at http://www.seesaw.com

Next Week: Check out my blog next week to see what is happening with The Reading Workshop in our classroom!

I’d like to write about the exciting things that are happening in my classroom. The Reading Workshop that I am doing for my action research is one of the things that is high on my priority list, and it has made such a positive impact on my students, and my classroom that I feel it would be a good topic to blog about.

I think that the epals program that I have recently started with my students would be another topic that would be a fun thing to blog about. My students are very excited to get started with this program and after having our invitation accepted we are anxiously awaiting a teacher in France pairing us with her children.

I plan to begin a book recommendation process with my kids this week where they review book that they have read, and recommend it to their classmates. I have discussed with them the ways that we could do this, so that they could have some ownership in the process as well, and they are very excited to get started! This may be a fun topic to blog about as well!