A First Connection Between New Hampshire, Iowa, Five Teachers, Fifth Graders, and KidBlog!

Our first connection of the year!

On the second day of school all of the 5th graders, their teachers Kate Goodwin and Aubrey Stafford, the art teacher Bobbi Daggett, and myself got together in the library.

We were there to Skype with our friend Stephen Gagnon, who we are planning to connect with throughout the year.  In the post Being Heard and Seen Through Related Arts Student Portfolio Blogs This Year, I shared how this connection started and our plans.

Steve has blogged with his students for the last several years and is awesome at getting our students excited about blogging too.  He talked to them about writing posts, commenting, and brainstorming ideas to write about.

Our students were anxious to hear what the plans were and that his students were coming back to school in just a week and a half.  

I am having such a fun time planning with Aubrey, Kate, and Steve.  We were so excited about this first connection.

After Steve spoke to us, we decided to do a brainstorming activity using Padlet.  

I started a Padlet quick, 5th Grade Brainstorming For Our Kidblogs, while Kate and Aubrey asked the students to brainstorm topics they could write about on their KidBlog.

They came up with some wonderful topics.  I can't wait to start reading their posts.  

When we finished the brainstorming activity, we showed the students where the links to their Related Arts Portfolio and Classroom Kidblogs will be located on the 5th Grade Symbaloo webmix.  

We then talked about how they will create a widget for the 5th Grade Symbaloo on their iPad. Everyone was so excited that they headed back to the classroom to get that done. 

I loved seeing these pictures that Kate took of her students adding the Symbaloo to their own iPad. Now they will have all of the resources that they need with them at all times.  

After school it was fun to read the tweets from Steve, Aubrey, and Kate about our connection.

And Kate's tweet says it all...

I can't wait to start blogging with them too!