We always talk about opening our student’s eyes to the bigger picture and the world around them. How can we connect them to their learning? How can we let them see that there are bigger things out there beyond their own neighborhood and school?
More importantly, how can we keep our students interested in writing? What can improve their skills in their daily writing? Social media is a great, easy way to peak students interests, create an authentic audience to motivate them to produce quickly writing as well!
Blogging is an easy, safe way to connect our young students across the global in an instant! We have been using Seesaw within our school for ALL areas in the curriculum, but the new blogging feature makes it so easy for us to connect with other classrooms and share our learning with peers in other countries.
I used twitter to find other teachers looking to connect, and paired up three classrooms in our school to get us started. We have only just begun, but the students are SO excited to share what they are learning, their likes/dislikes, etc. They have an authentic audience, which makes them exciting and proud to write more and more each post!
They were so excited when we get started this week, and immediately made connections with their new “blog buddy” in Hong Kong! We were so excited that they liked so many of the same things we liked, and we can’t wait to keep this excitement going through the year! This week, we will be sharing photos from our classroom to showcase our favorite learning tool whether it be an anchor chart, word wall, iPad, SMART board, or classroom library! We will ask our blog buddies to share their favorite learning tool, so we can compare and make even more connections across the globe!
What a fabulous, real-world connection to get our students using Social Media appropriately and purposefully!
By Lissa Blake @D60Holmestech
