Blogging with Fifth Graders

The fifth grade started blogging this year! Each class got a few lessons with Mr. Homepage of Andrew's BlogHarte on how to make your blog, for example: a lesson on how to comment on other’s blogs, and a few more. The best part about blogs is that you can personalize them,  put how you feel, and other things. When you personalize your blog, you use Widgets, Themes, and other things. 

We interviewed a few students and asked these questions:

  • “Do you like blogging?”
  • ” Do you think blogging is a good idea?”
  •  ” What is your blog about?” 
  • ” What inspired you?”   

Here are some respones to our interview questions.

When we asked our question “Do you like blogging?”, Mrs. Power, our teacher, said  she “loves blogging, is new to blogging, and thinks it will be fun”. Other students in Mrs. Power’s class said, “It gives you a chance to write about your opinion of things and personal ideas”, “yes, it gives you a chance to tell people what’s on your mind, and it is fun to make comments, making the blog, making posts, and posting pictures” [but not of ourselves], and “yes, I think it is fun”. 

Also when we asked our question “Do you think blogging is a good idea?”, Mrs. Power said “It is a great idea and students get to respond to classmates.” Other students said ” I think it is a time to learn to socialize on the web”, “yes, it gives students a place to express their ideas”, and “you get to tell about your life [at school]”.

When we asked our question of “What is your blog about?”, Mrs. Power said she “only writes posts to which students will respond.”

We asked the students what inspires them to write on their blog. Students said things that interest them such as “a bird called Cassowary”, “my random thoughts”, “Boston sports teams” are a few examples.

We think blogging is also a good idea because you can comment on other blogs and receive helpful ideas to help you write your next blog post. We also think that blogging is a good idea because there are many reasons to blog like to express your ideas, to convince people to do right things, and other things.

Soon we may start using our blogs to communicate with other schools around the world and we could comment on each others blogs.

 Reported By:

Andrew and Jude

Bodacious Blogs

In school we have blogs, they are really cool. We write about upcoming things, like the Patriots’ games or Chickering School. We can write about anything we want to write about. We can also comment on our friends blog. We also have blogging buddies in China. We  have widgets, which are the things on the sidebars. Widgets like animals, Voki’s, and weather widgets are really fun.  Also ClustrMap is a widget where they show where the people who are commenting on your blog are. The interesting part of getting comments is that person could be anybody in the whole world!                                                                                                                                                              Question for Mrs. Chivarini:

Q. How did you find our China friends?

To listen to Mrs. Chiavarini’s answer, please click on the podcast below:

Mrs. Chiavarini Interview
Questions for Brett, Ellie, Erik, Elizabeth, and Catherine

Q. Do you like blogging, and why?
Q. How often do you blog?, how much do you do?
Q. How would you feel if your blog got deleted?, can you say more?
Q. From one to ten, how would you rate your blog?
Q. What is the main topic of your blog?

Student Blog Interviews

Blogging is a great way to show your creativity for all people to see. As you heard in our podcast, there were mixed feelings about blogging.  Please checkout our classroom Blog, which has links to our personal blogs at:

http://gr5blogs.edublogs.org/

Reported by Jack, Nick, Brian, and Mitchell

Chickering Reporters

Have you ever made a podcast? Or an Animoto video? Well if you haven’t, and would like to, you might consider starting reporters at your school.

Chickering Reporters is a fun activity in our school for kids who do not participate in band. Reporting is an educational and enjoyable program for our kids.

We are able to pick our own topic ideas to investigate. The kids that choose the same topics meet on long Wednesdays, to plan what they are going to do.  They are kids from different classes.  In order to figure out what we need to work on we have to meet together to agree. We have a digital workspace called a wiki.  We meet and brainstorm ideas for our present posts both in person and virtually.

What happens each day, is one class comes and reports on the topic that they had picked to report on.  The next time we meet, we look over all the work we did, and make a plan for what we will do next. When we finish our post we take pictures, create podcasts, and/or videos to go along with the post. Mrs. Chase then checks over our work and suggests  final edits. Then we put the blog post, videos, etc. on chickeringreports.edublogs.org. We self-assess our work by  reading our post and listening to our podcast or video. Next we answer the questions given on the self -assessment sheet. When we interviewed some of the fifth graders about what they thought of being a reporter, everyone said they “loved it”.  When we have finished our posts we think about new topics we could write about for our next post. We make new groups, then we will follow these steps again.

Here are a few students’ thoughts on Chickering Reporters.

Chickering Reporter Interviews

 

Reported by: Andriana, Anabel, Isabella F., Brickley, Caroline W.,  and Hannah T.