Hi! I made it to Philadelphia Thursday. Today I'm being shown a high school that is kind of like our classroom. All the students have white MacBook computers just like you. The difference is they are older so they have learned to use them to do more of their learning, just like I have explained to you WE want to be able to do. And we are getting there!

Like we talked about the other day, we have already come so far in our writing, posting to our blogs, knowing how to get to certain things through our wiki. Seeing these older students being able to do what WE want to be able to do is very exciting! I'm really looking forward to how our learning will change! 

Be good, work hard, I'll see you Monday!

Mr. Crosby

It is great to see more posts showing up. We are continuing to write "Important Paragraphs" and we are getting better at writing them. Soon we will make changes to them so we don't have to always use the word important ... you'll see. For now lets keep going until we are good at them. We are making good progress! 

We posted our first blog posts today. They are very simple paragraphs following a pattern from "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown. Our next step is to revisit these same posts and expand them into much more descriptive paragraphs. (Teachers, find the lesson we are following here on the Writing Fix website) Feel free to read and comment on our first posts!

It has taken longer than we had hoped, but we are finally ready to start blogging. For our past readers, this is a new class of 4th graders, however you will still see our last class under the name "Mr. Crosby's Alumni Bloggers" if you want to continue connecting and communicating with them. We hope to have our first posts from our new class published in the next few days. For my past students, let me know if you have any problems posting to your blog.

Really good to see some of you posting still. I am back from my trip now so I should be able to keep track more often when you do post. I think you will enjoy it more if more of you are blogging and commenting on each other's posts. So think about things to write about and when you see others from class get them to read and write and comment.

Tell what you did for the 4th of July, OR tell about a movie you've seen or would like to see, OR write about something going on in the news (like Iran or Michael Jackson or anything else). Even write about a post you think others should write about and then comment on each other's. 

Bye for now!

So that we are practicing reading critically we are each going to find a blog post that we choose as our "Blog Post of the Week!" As you read others' posts, cut and paste the URL of any post you think is well written onto an Appleworks page that you save as:

“My Blog post of the week of 2-20-09”

During our class discussion about what "well written" means, you said: Uses proper English and punctuation, good spelling (at least), explains well and describes well, shows doesn't tell (as much as possible).

Then on Friday we will each revisit those posts to select our post of the week. Once selected we will post a comment on that person's post explaining to them that this is your winner and ALL the reasons why. 

Pretend another teacher (and class) is thinking about blogging, but they are not sure about it. Write them a paragraph about your experience blogging and explain to them your thoughts and feelings about blogging.

Look over your blog posts and pick one to "remix." Make changes, edit out mistakes you made, add information you left out, add descriptive words and phrases ... basically use the skills you've learned since you originally wrote the post and make it better. Show us what you've learned! If you were a 4th grader in our class you must pick a post you wrote in 4th grade, If you joined us in 5th grade you must choose a post from 5th grade, and if you joined us this year you must pick a post from before the Holidays. It will be like old home week reacquainting yourself with an old friend! 

 

Following the pattern we've learned from reading and analyzing the style in "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown, research your favorite topics and write "Important" style paragraphs about them. 

One of the reindeer has had an accident or is sick and Santa has come to you for help. He wants you to be a reindeer pulling his sleigh. How? He will somehow (that's up to you) magically turn you into a reindeer for the night and then turn you back into yourself. Tell how that happens and about all your experiences that night. Explain turning into a reindeer - does it tickle? hurt? what does it look like / feel like?  Explain / describe pulling the sleigh, landing on roofs, dealing with weather around the world ... what is fun? scary? touching?

Remember, "show don't tell" and have fun!