Earth Day – April 22nd

Posted on 04/26/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

earth-day

We have added a new podcast to the Virtual Roughneck podcasting blog and wanted to be sure that our visitors were aware of its posting. Rather than repost the content here, we will simply link to it so that you can watch our presentation.

Be sure to follow the links on our sidebar under the heading, “Hometown Connections”, to Our Class Website (It is an excellent resource! You must check out the Student Websites links), Cranford’s Podcasts, Roughneck Moodle (Our elementary online courses), our Monthly PDF Assignments (a research database that we regularly use with pdf assignments that are changed monthly), and our Holiday Heyday activities (which provide varied monthly links and a pdf calendar skills practice drill) .

Let us know what you find helpful here. We would love to have your feedback.

Challenge09 #8 Animals in the Wild – Continued…

Posted on 04/25/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

What wonderful timing! We were asked to link to websites or videos to THE animal we would prefer to see in the wild rather than in a zoo. Our class had made a list researched on Facts4Me, but we were having a really hard time narrowing the selection down to the one we would choose above the rest.

Meanwhile, just outside our classroom, the third graders in Mrs. Blankenship’s room were in the middle of a measurement lesson which combined both Science and Math. We watched the development of this project with great anticipation and curiosity. These students first measured the average length of the blue whale (Thanks to Mr. Webb and Room 8 Melville for this awesome link) and hung crepe paper from the ceiling tiles to equal that length. They then predicted whether or not the combined height of the total students in the classroom would equal the length of the whale’s body. Lying along a tape measure, each student’s data was recorded and tagged with the name and total feet/inches. It was proven that the total height of students was sufficient to equal the length of a blue whale. Students were then asked to lie on the floor along the tape measure, head to foot, to give them a true understanding of the magnitude of this great mammal.

This made such an impact on my students that without hesitation they have choosen as the animal they would love to see in the wild would be the blue whale.

Thank you for this Blog Challenge.

We have Blog Visitors from all over the world, and we would like to know….Are there whales where you live? If so, have you ever had the privilege of seeing one in the wild? We would love to know!

Challenge09 #8 – Animals in the Wild?

Posted on 04/21/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

Picture from Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary

Above you will see a picture taken from the Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary. If you visit their site, you will discover that this is not a typical zoo, but instead its residents have been rescued from one kind of disaster or another.

The challenge posed to our class by the Blog Challenge 09 was to “write a post about an animal that you would like to see in the wild. See if you can add a link in your post to a webcam or video and some websites about your animal. Why do you want to see that animal in the wild rather than at a zoo?”

Our students are going to use Facts4Me to research this possibility, and we will be updating this post within the next few days. Please check back to read about our findings.

Challenge09 #7 – Shades of Color

Posted on 04/13/2009 by Mrs. Odom

colortherapyglasses1

Our blog challenge this week is to write about colors. Having exactly seven kids in our class, we decided that the colors of the rainbow would be the perfect thing to write about. After reading Planting a Rainbow, the kids chose their favorite color of the rainbow and used that color to make an acrostic poem.

If you have a picture of a rainbow and would like to share it with us, email it to [email protected] or [email protected]. Whatever pictures we receive, we will post them along with your school’s name in a slide show!

In the meantime, please enjoy our students’ acrostic poetry created as participants in the 2009 Blog Challenge hosted by Mrs. Wyatt and Sue Waters, The Edublogger.

This Post’s for YOU!

Posted on 04/07/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

If you live in a country where the marshmallow Peep is not a prevalent Easter treat, then this post’s for YOU! We hope that you enjoy.

The students in Mr. Webb’s Room 8@Melville classroom will soon be receiving a shipment from our students. Inside will be PEEPS! We thought you might enjoy this video showing you just how they came to be before they came to you.

What other kinds of products can you name that are mass-produced in much the same way as Peeps? What kinds of items are made one at a time? Why is that?

Challenge09 #6 – Mix in 10 New Blogs and Blend Well

Posted on 04/06/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

blogging-recipe Our classroom has really been cooking up something special with our blogging. Last Friday, I posted a podcast that indicated we had been visited by 38 countries. By Monday morning, that number was up to 47!!

We keep a record of these countries by printing out and adding a 4 x 6 flag representation to the world map that hangs right outside our intermediate office. We want to thank you all for visiting and leaving comments, and Walmart wants to thank you because their sales of printer ink cartridges has increased since we began adding those flags to our blog back in February! =-)

The Blog Challenge 09 for this week is to add 10 new blogs to our blog roll and to separate our blog roll into at least two categories. This is a recipe that we can certainly follow.

We have a specific category for the Blogging Challenge09. Here you will find Mrs. Wyatt’s blog, Technology in Our Classroom. As we make connections with other classrooms, we are adding them under the category, Blogs We LOVE to Visit. We do have our favorites and are trying right now to connect with Room 8@Melville. The teacher posted a comment that they had never heard of Peeps!! We want to ship them some Peeps, so we are hoping to receive a mailing address through email to me at [email protected] in time for Easter.

Something that has really helped my students when visiting blogs is adding a description for each link. When students put their cursor on top of the link, a description of what kind of content, location, and grade level of the blog appears. I also like this feature because it minimizes my search time when I am trying to locate a specific post.

We are going to clean up our sidebar by listing fewer comments and posts. We are also going to clarify the category, Favorite Connections, by changing it to Hometown Connections. These links are to blogs with authors within our district. My students will be adding more blogs to this category very soon because now others teachers on our campus are wanting to know, “What is going on with this blogging?”, and, “How do we get involved?”

Quite a good recipe for the integration of technology applications, don’t you think? rat1

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!

Give Peeps a Chance

Posted on 03/31/2009 by Mrs. Cranford

Easter is right around the corner, so we thought it would be a great time to test your knowledge of the infamous Easter marshmallow treat, the Peep. Just how much do you “think” you know?

NOW TEST YOUR PEEP IQ

Now think about this. If you could create a brand new kind of Peep, what would it be? Also what color or flavor would you choose?

When you have finished posting your comment on these questions, you are going to want to visit our class website’s Holiday Heyday for some Easter math and reading fun.

This post has been written on “our choice of topic with embedded media” as part of The Edublogger’s Student Competition!