First post!

Welcome parents, students, coworkers, and peers! 

I've been meaning to start a classroom website for quite some time. Our school district doesn't have any space for teacher websites, so I put the thought on hold. I created a personal blog last year, and realized I could just make a classroom blog instead of a website. Now with a gentle nudge from a grad school class, I finally found the time to do it! 

This will be a landing pad for lots of things. Parents, I will keep this updated with information about school, our classroom, and your student.  I will also be posting some ideas we are using in our classroom, that may or may not be helpful to other educators. Lastly, I will be adding some resources I discover as I finish my Master's Degree. 

Parents, please remember to check out our Classdojo page! You can check this throughout the week to see your child's behavior points. Reports are always emailed on Fridays.

Click picture to head to our site!

 This week in our "switch" group, a few students were able to focus primarily on numbers 1-10. These students created a book in which we wrote numbers, glued items to match the number, and added photos of making numbers with our bodies. Here is one example of the number 18:

My current course with Ball State has taught me so much about literacy through technology. I knew quite a bit coming in, but the literacy piece has had so much growth in just the last few weeks. It is so interesting how 5 & 6 year old's writing processes are enhanced by technology. So many times teachers of older grades ask me how in the world I could incorporate technology into learning at such a young age. What many teachers still do not understand, is that we are now teaching digital natives.

This year, my teaching of writing has changed dramatically. Especially in the last few weeks. I am doing a presentation on digital storytelling, and it has opened my eyes to more uses for technology. Another teacher showed us an example of her kindergarten class creating their own digital story. Truly inspiring! This class read the book, Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems, and then made different endings to the story. They then made a picture to go along with their ending, and made a digital story out of it.

The only issue with using technology in writing is the issue of the internet. I am always questioning myself if I am taking all the right avenues in order to properly publish student's work online. My hope with this blog, specifically,  is that students will be able to "publish" a story here, in order to share their writing with their parents/ other students/ the world. My hope is that this will help to spark a love of writing and collaborating in my students that will last for their lifetime. 

Thank you for checking out my blog! I look forward to learning, growing, and celebrating my kindergarteners with you!