Challenge #3 Bigger in TEXAS

Posted on 10/06/2010 by Mrs. Cranford

This is our third year to participate in the Student Challenge so we had already added the widgets suggested in Challenge#3. So we started thinking about what might interest you about our state of Texas. One of the best known sayings about Texas is that, “Everything’s always BIGGER in Texas.” Some people even think that we ride around on horses and all own oil wells. We have searched and put together some slides that will give you a chance to decided….Fact or Nonfact. Is everything bigger in Texas? Or do we just like to believe it is?

Challenge #2 – A Place to Visit

Posted on 10/02/2010 by Mrs. Cranford

We are studying Johnny Appleseed this week, so when the Challenge#2 asked us to tell about a place we would like to visit, we immediately thought of John Chapman’s travels. We hope that you enjoy our slides and the information we will share with you. Please listen to the entire slideshow and answer the questions posed at the end of the slides.

Challenge #1 – Thanks for the Pingback!

Posted on 09/27/2010 by Mrs. Cranford

Blog orange

Once again for the third year, the C-O Connections are participating in the International Student Blog Challenge. We were so excited this week when we read about the first student challenge in the Challenge 1. Part of the challenge was to update your “About” page to reflect your 2010 students, and there right on the fourth bullet was OUR BLOG, CO CONNECTIONS, cited as an example to all. Thanks so much, Sue Wyatt and Sue Waters for encouraging and motivating students to write. This has really revved up their motors.

We have customized our theme, revised our About page, added the Edublogger badge to our sidebar, and visited the blogs listed on either side of ours in the student challenge listing. So now in order to complete Challenge 1, we would like to tell you why you should visit our blog.

Alex thinks you should visit our blog because there are lots of activities here, like our Game page. We also like to link lots of fun things into each of our posts. You can also find out a lot of information about us and our community by looking at the sides of our blog.

Kristen said that you will see that it snowed here last year. Now this is really something because we rarely get snow. Once it snowed on Valentine’s Day when we were studying the book Snowflake Bentley and we took a snow day. Also, we have a new class this year called Healthy Bodies and it is teaching our students to exercise and eat healthier.

Adrian comments that too much junk food can make you fat.

Mrs. Odom thinks you should visit our blog because we have links to all of our campus blogs listed on the right sidebar. Also, you will find links to the Blog Challenges. Some of our favorite blogs which we still follow are linked and if you will hover your mouse over the titles you will see a description, or location of that blog. This is very helpful to students when looking for a place to comment.

Mrs. Cranford thinks you could spend hours surfing around this class blog. She especially wants to invite you to visit “Mrs. Cranford’s World” because she has pictures of her grandchildren there. See if you can find them. Another great link is to our Moodle Courses. These are online lessons. You can login as a guest using the name given to you on the home page of Moodle. You can go into the Course INDEX which contains ALL of the teachers’ lessons. If your school has Moodle lessons, Mrs. Cranford will email you any lessons you want to import into your own course.

Spend some time with us on C-O Connections.

Blog Challenge09 #7

Posted on 10/31/2009 by Mrs. Odom

on_vacation

Miss Wyatt’s challenge #7 proved to be very interesting for our kids. As the class discussed vacations, they came to realize that a vacation really doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A vacation is simply going somewhere with the family and spending quality time together. I hope you enjoy the recaps of our students’ most memorable vacations.

adrian1 My favorite vacation was a trip to Washington D.C. I flew with my mom, dad, grandmother, and my little brother. We went to see where the president lives. It had lots of presidents on the wall.

Adrian

alex-150x150 One of my favorite vacations was a trip to Six Flags over Texas. I went with my mom and dad. We drove there and spent the night. We rode lots of rides together. We went to Hurricane Harbour too.

Alex

kristen-150x150 My best vacation was when I went to Wyoming. I went in my mom’s car. My mom, her boyfriend, and my sister went in the summer. We saw the state flag. We had a lot of fun.

Kristen

Do you have a favorite vacation or even a dream vacation? We would love to hear about yours and be sure to link some attractions that you saw, or would love to see.

Blog Challenge09 #8

Posted on 10/26/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

kid thumbing fingers

The students at White Oak Intermediate are becoming aware of our digital footprint and how important it is for us to watch what we post online for the world to view. We have discussions prior to ever accessing the internet about internet safety and the problems that can result because of its misuse. While our classroom teachers stress these guidelines, it is our computer lab teacher that really brings meaning to the concept.

We have the best computer teacher in the world. She begins the first of every year talking to us about digital citizenship and commenting guidelines. Her name is Nina Peery, and you can find all kinds of helpful information on her technology blog, Keystrokes. After two weeks of internet safety, we review our what we have learned by playing Internet Safety Games that Mrs. Peery designed.

Blog Challenge09 #1

Posted on 10/15/2009 by Mrs. Odom

WELCOME_CHART

Welcome to our class blog. We are so excited to be blogging again this year. This school year our class is a combination of 3rd,4th, and 5th graders. As the kids and I continue our learning journey, I hope you also continue leaving your comments. The kids really enjoy being able to converse with other kids their age in different countries. Although Mrs. Cranford has taken on additional responsiblities this year, she still plays a very intricate part in our blogging adventures. Thanks for visiting and taking the time to reply. Your comments are always welcome!

Challenge09 #5 – Making Changes that Made a Difference

Posted on 04/03/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

computer_animated_globe Have you visited other blogs and left comments to students in other countries? Would you like to continue blogging? How does it make you feel to know that other students and your parents are reading what you are writing at school? What interesting things have you learned about from visiting other blogs? How do you overcome the challenges of reading blogs that are written by students who speak another language?

These are some of the questions that we asked our students. Their answers were recorded on video and you can see and also hear them here.

The students had good answers for these questions, but I would like to share a little bit more. As a resource teacher, I jump on every opportunity to showcase my students’ abilities. When I returned from the 2009 TCEA Conference, I was convinced that my students could improve a multitude of skills through blogging. There were no blogs on our intermediate campus, so we would be the pioneers in this technological adventure. Were we up for it? You bet!

We wanted the other students to notice what we were doing and ask their teachers why they had no classroom blog. In a short time, our students had visitors from over 35 countries and over 200 comments posted to their blog. Every Thursday, these students proudly wear their C-O Connections blogging t-shirts.
Other students acknowledge them by name now. They possess an ownership for their learning and a confidence that they did not have before blogging. Parents are beginning to post in reply to their child’s posts and have subscribed to our blog. The process of blogging has brought a closeness between school and community, and more importantly, between child and parent.

Making this change in our classroom curriculum has truly made a difference in the lives of each of my students, and some of them will never be the same.

This post has been written on “the differences blogging has made in our lives” as part of The Edublogger’s Student Competition!

Challenge09 #4 – Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Posted on 03/23/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

How do you reduce, reuse and recycle at your home or school?

That was the question posed to us by the Blog Challenge09, and we intend to answer that question. In January, we had a Recycling Fair at our school. Each class prepared a poster and targeted one way in which we could reduce, reuse, and recyle. Parents were invited and the community has since started a recycling center.

On March 28th @ 8:30 we have another chance to help our planet by taking part in Earth Hour. We need you to commit to turning off your lights for one hour.

Have you ever wonder just how many lights are used around the entire world? How much energy could we save if we just turned them off when we are not using them?

Click on the bulb below to take a closer look at all the lights. Then tell me one thing you could plan to do in the dark at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, March 28th.