Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Homework Help, Tips, and Challenge Activities

Another great use for a blog is homework help.  Students and parents can visit a blog to view lessons and subjects taught during the day or throughout the week.  There can be activities or suggestions for reviewing, practicing, and applying skills or concepts taught.  Second graders are not always able to remember how or what was taught in class.  Messages and directions often are confused between home and school.  Through a blog, parents can access tips, activities, and ideas to support learning done in the classroom.  For example:   Make a list of nouns found in the kitchen.  Tell your family that a noun is a person, place, or thing.  Bring the list to school to share with the class and earn a raffle ticket.  The raffle ticket incentive will entice the students and make them want to check out the blog to see what activities are listed.  Bonus or enrichment activities could be listed to provide help and support for both parents and students.  Outstanding efforts towards the listed activities could then be displayed on the blog.

5 comments:

  1. Kerri,

    Beautiful job with your blog and your suggestions. I think that having a homework blog or even an enrichment blog like you said is so beneficial in a classroom. The communication DOES get construed between the students, by the time they get home and having that resources only helps your students. It is a great tool. I wish that I had these types of resources and strategies growing up because it would have really helped.

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  2. Excellent ideas for your blog. I teach second grade as well and though I send home a homework sheet for the week, students lose the sheet or parents do not place them back in the folders, so the idea of having it online is a perfect solution to this problem. I also like that you would have incentives such as a raffle for those who visit the blog. That will definitely help to ensure that the blog is being used daily by your students and parents. Lastly, coming up with the additional things parents can do with thier child is a big help because often times, parents want to do more with their children but do not know what to ask or how to go about it. Great blog!

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  3. Thanks for the positive comments. I have had fun playing around and learning more and more of what is possible with a blog.

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  4. Great work on your blog Kerri! It's looks awesome! I really like that you have added your students illustrations. Excellent idea on using your blog as a communicator. There are many times that parents have questions for teachers. This would be a great way to help those parents out. I already use a website for all of our classroom letters but there is not a way for parents to respond with questions other than sending an email. I like your idea of adding it in a blog.

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  5. Hi Kerri,
    I enjoyed your posting--I think blogs may be a way to give homework a new meaning for students--that it may be able to help us transform it--make it more engaging. We can provide assistance-helpful hints for students and parents--but also a way for classmates to share ideas about an assignment so that they still feel connected at home.

    Thanks for sharing these helpful ideas.

    Susan

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