C4K #11 Special Assignment

I have spent the last four hours just getting engulfed in Mrs. Yollis' classroom blog. What an incredible amount of resources at the fingertips of those very lucky 3rd graders as well as for their parents!! I tried to read as much as I could about who Mrs. Yollis is and what she is trying to produce to her students, parents, and visitors like me on the internet. I would say that what I read about her is pretty impressive. She has traveled to places like Bali and fished in the Arctic Circle. She has also been to the headquarters for Google and left a link to her blog on the results of the conference. I would say that she is a very passionate person who genuinely cares about the success of her students.

Another great part of this site that I really enjoyed were all the tools that are provided for the parents. She gives a ton of tutorials that can help the parents understand what their kids are doing and it also gives them the tools to actually help their kids with their assignments. One of the biggest excuses that a lot of parents use today are they don't know how to do the homework. So they feel that they are not help and tend to bow out as a support for their kids. Well, not with Mrs. Yollis' students parents. There are links like How to talk to your Child and 8 Back to School Goals for Parents that really educate the parents and give them great tools on the approach they should take with expectations and skills they they can learn to help their children be more successful!

I also really enjoyed the different blogs that the students are working on! They are working on a blog called Yollis' 365 Project in which each student is assigned to put a picture up for that particular day and write what the meaning of the picture is and why they are using it. I have seen some really great post. The one I was assigned to what from day 283 and it was about a fall festival and the origins of Halloween. There are many other blogs that the students are involved in. Mrs. Yollis' 3rd grade class is involved in a collaborative project called Our World Our Stories and it involves classes from all six continents who blog about different things about where they are from. This involves hobbies, food, etc. The great thing is it opens up communication between these different cultures and they each share their experiences so that the students are learning about the other classes. I am really excited about this and have added it to my PLN!!

I really enjoyed this assignment and I would like to thank Mrs. Yollis for being such an incredible inspiration. I have got so many ideas that I took from her that I will implement into my curriculum if I am lucky enough to have an administrator that is as open as hers is to utilize the tools that technology has supplied to us!!!