Parent Involvement

How much should parents be involved in their child's education?

Have you ever had a student failing or falling behind? If so, are you able to contact the parent and have positive communication about helping the student succeed? Some of the districts with professional parents expect more from their child. If their child has a 94-95, the parent is contacting the teacher wondering why their child has not scored higher. These parents have unrealistic expectations, even though their child's score is an A, it is not high enough for the parent. The opposite is true in my district. A lot of my students' parents commute to New York or New Jersey, leaving their house at 3-4a.m. and not returning until 7p.m. When I have a student with a D or F on tests, the parents do not contact me with concern and I have a hard time contacting them to discuss my concern.

Is it easier to deal with parents who are overly involved in their child's education or not involved at all?

http://integraonline.com/~familyscience.org/pdfs/nsta_article.pdf is an article that discusses teachers and adminstrations find parent involvement as their greatest challenge and cause the most stress in their job.

http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/05/parental-involvement.html is a blog discussing parent involvement. Some teachers feel they do have enough parent involvement. Some teachers feel their job would be worse without parent invovlement. Some wonder if parent involvement should be in moderation.

Wikis in the Classroom

In my district, I am encountering resistance to using wikis in my classroom. When I learned about wikis, I had high hopes of using them with my students to promote technology and peer interaction. I was told by the technology supervisor that I could not use wikis. They were worried about the open access of editing and commenting. I started a classroom wiki, like a webpage this year. This year, I disabled the discussion section and made it private, only I could edit the wiki. I am not sure if I ruined the purpose of wikis? Next year, now that I have more ideas, I am going to try discussing using a wiki with my principal. Hopefully she can help me with the technology supervisors.

Social Bookmarking

Here is one example I could use social bookmarking with my third grade class.

Obj.-> use at least three websites from Delious to gather facts and pictures about each of the five vertebrate groups.

Activities->
-View Miss Argot's bookmarked websites on Vertebrates in Delious.
-Pick at least three websites to use facts/pictures about each Vertebrate group.
-Create a poster including:
*Vertebrate label
*5 Vertebrate groups labeled: Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish, and Birds
*Two facts from Delious websites about each group.
*Two pictures from Delious websites for each group.
-(Note)If students find useful websites at home, they may share the website to be bookmarked in Delious

Evaluation-> Posters will be graded with a rubric including all the requirements.

Pageflakes

Here is how I started to use a RSS Resource Page:

http://www.pageflakes.com/kristieargot/

RSS Feed

I'm not sure yet how much I will use Google Reader. I don't follow too many websites that I have a need to be told the updates.

When searching for sites with RSS and trying to decide how I would use it in the classroom, I thoughts about TIME magazine. I added the top stories as an RSS to my Google Reader. I thought each day, I would view one top story with my class and discuss why it is a current event.

I also thought about trying to teach my students' parents about RSS and telling them they could set up an account so they are aware of updates to my classroom wiki.

Comment

I left a comment at http://www.thereadingworkshop.com/2009/09/blogging-in-classroom.html

It is awaiting approval and the blog says it is summer vacation, so I don't know if it will be approved in time.

Blog Project Inspiration

Teacher's blog with explaination: http://www.thereadingworkshop.com/2009/09/blogging-in-classroom.html


Example of student blog: http://darrens22.wordpress.com

I found "The Reading Workshop" blog. It had a lot of great examples of both the teacher's blog and students' blogs. I liked how there was video, pictures, and texts used in the blogs. I also liked how the student's blog shows different types of writing: journals, poems, writing a letter, etc. I also like how the teacher's blog includes a rubric for students to know how their blog and comments to other blogs will be graded.

This was a sixth grade class and I only teach third grade, but I still think I could use a similar blog in my class to express ideas, thoughts, and responses about books or what is happening in my students' lives. I thought I could have my students pick their favorite book and write a summary including characters, setting, plot, etc. I also am thinking of a personal narrative in the beginning of the school year about summer vacation.

Read/Write Web in the Classroom

I think the Read/Write Web will make my practice and classroom more inviting, exciting, and hands-on. I currently have a Wiki that makes the classroom inviting for both parents and students. Parents can learn what is happening in the classroom. Students can find their homework, spelling and reading vocabulary at home if they forgot to write it down. It will make the lessons more exciting and hands-on for students because I will post pictures of projects and have students blog to explain what they learned. I am also thinking of using a Wiki as a journaling tool. Students will write a paragraph, and then peers will edit it. I think this is exciting because students will be able to see all the changes.