Summer Reading

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Creative Commons License Florin Rosoga via Compfight

Bring On the Summer [Reading]!

Similarly to the regular school year, you are to read at least half an hour each day.  Don’t worry too much!  It’s different than your normal assigned reading because you can read whatever you like!  That’s right, you read correctly!  Whatever you want!

Examples of whatever you would like:

  • novels
  • audiobooks
  • newspapers
  • online articles (like Newsela)
  • graphic novels
  • comic books (yes, even comic books)
  • pamphlets from a museum
  • magazines
  • word questions on IXL
  • biographies

Keep track of what you’ve read by filling out the blank journal that you was handed out before school ended.
Your journals are expected to be completed (all pages filled) and you will present your journal when you return to school.  This will be your very first language arts grade for the school year.  

What do you need to put in your journal?  
The possibilities are endless (here are just a few):

  • list of books you liked and another for ones you didn’t like
  • pictures you drew about the book (just include the title and author)
  • printed, cut, and pasted book reviews
  • printed, cut, and pasted book covers
  • book reviews/ summaries/ favorite parts that you wrote
  • quotes worth quoting

Tips

  • Make a book club! Join up with people who like the same kinds of books you do to make it more interesting.
  • Create rewards for yourself with each book (or set number of books completed)
  • Borrow books rather than buying them (unless your parents allow you to): Overdrive, Hawaii State Public Library System
  • Sign up for free summer reading programs to get free books!

Recommended Book Lists

SBC Week 10: Farewell

MAY 20, 2017 BY MISS W. and edited by Ms. Kojima

Week 10: Farewell from the 18th challenge

This is our last post for the Student Blogging Challenge until we start again in October 2017. Miss W hopes you have enjoyed the activities and the chance to make connections with other students and classes around the world!

We have had a great 10 weeks of blogging. You have learned so many skills to help you improve your blogs. Many of you have improved those writing skills or maybe digital skills with using a variety of tools to embed on your blog. But it is now time to evaluate your progress as well as the progress of the blogging challenge itself.

This week there are two things to do:

  1. Evaluate your own blog
  2. Evaluate the actual blogging challenge

1. This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of March 2017.  Write a post that answers all of the bulleted questions in #1.  You need to restate the questions in your answers.  

Answer these questions about your own blog:

  • How many posts did you write?
  • How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
  • How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
  • Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
  • Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
  • Did you change blog themes at all and why?
  • How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
  • How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?
  • Which web tools did you use to show creativity on your blog?

Now ask another student, teacher, or parent from your school who has not read your blog to do an audit.  Sit beside them while they navigate around your blog, record what you observe as they interact with your blog. When finished, ask them the following questions:

  • What were your first impressions of this blog?
  • What captured your attention?
  • What distracted you on the blog?
  • What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

2. Evaluating the challenge.

This is the eighteenth challenge and sometimes Miss W feels like the activities are getting stale especially for those students who have taken part in more than one set of challenges. So over the next few weeks, Miss W will be adding new pages that you all can contribute to. Every month of the year, there are special events, festivals, birthdays of authors etc. Which ones do you think it would be interesting to write about? Find the post ideas page for that month and add your ideas in the comments (These are found above the header area).

Miss W usually has a form to fill in here, but this time she would like you to leave a quality comment giving your opinion of the challenge. You should include the following things:

  • The most interesting challenge for you
  • How often you visited other blogs and left comments
  • Whether you read the challenge Flipboard magazine
  • P PMI or plus/minus/interesting point about the challenge
  • The most important thing you learned while doing the challenge

 

Thanks again for taking part in this challenge. Hopefully, you will take part again in October this year. If you have taken part in at least two sets of challenges, you can also become a mentor, so watch out for the mentor post in late September.

Keep writing, keep reading the magazine, and if you have a great post you would like Miss to add to the magazine over the summer/winter break, feel free to leave a comment here.

SBC Week 9: Improvement?

Week 9: Have I Improved?

O, Let Me Ne'er Forget

Mike Trimble via Compfight

So we are one week away from the end of the challenge. Do you think you have improved your blogging skills since you began earlier this year? Now is your chance to prove your skills! 

Do at least one of the green activities.

Activity 1: Write the very best post you can for your teachers and visitors to read.

Remember essentials for a great post:

  1. catchy title
  2. includes at least one visual (with attribution) whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet or glogster
  3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through
  4. well written and not copy/pasted from somewhere else
  5. shows it has been proofread and spellchecked
  6. written in paragraphs – at least three of them
  7. includes links to other websites on similar topics – at least two of these
  8. ends with a question to lure your visitors into leaving a comment

Your choice of topics: only write about one of them

  • History
  • Inventions
  • Travel

When you have finished your post and your teacher has published it, then return to Miss W’s page and leave a link to the post. We still have some students just leaving a link to their blog rather than the exact post.

Activity 2: Write a post about your favorite blog (not from HMS and you visit often) and why you keep going back there. Remember to include links to a couple of posts they have written. Also, leave a comment on their blog to say you have written a post about them. When you have finished your post and your teacher has published it, then return to Miss W’s page and leave a link to the post.

Still got time left?

  • Visit other blogs and leave quality comments.
  • Read the magazine and visit posts to leave comments on.

SBC Week 8: Games!

Week 8: Games and more games

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Creative Commons License Hurca! via Compfight

There are two activities this week and they are in the form of a game. They involve visiting other blogs, leaving quality comments and writing a post about the comments you left.

Before playing the games, make sure your blog is ready for visitors.

  1. You have lots of interesting posts for visitors to read and comment on.
  2. Visitors can find posts by using tags or categories on your sidebar.
  3. You have a visitor widget to see where your visitors are coming from.
  4. You have at least five student blogs from other places around the world on your sidebar.

Game week is all about visiting other blogs.

Remember one of the main aims of blogging includes commenting and carrying on conversations with the author of posts and their other readers.

A good commenter will have:

  • read the post carefully,
  • checked out the links in the post
  • read the previous comments before they leave one of their own
  • added to the conversation with a quality comment – remember that video from Mrs. Yollis’ class.
  • included a link to their own blog or a similar post on their own blog

Game 1: 

This is a game we have run for many challenges and allows you to connect globally.  Those who have taken part in a challenge before know the game of  ‘Count Out Three’. Here are the instructions:

  1. Click on a blog on the student list or class list– count one
  2. Now click on a blog from the new student’s blogroll – count two
  3. Finally, click on a blog from that new blogroll – count three
  4. Leave a comment on an interesting post at this third blog.

*Make sure you are also replying to any comments that have been left for you.

Do this activity at least three times and finally, write your own post saying which blogs you visited and which posts you left a comment on. Why did you choose that post? Remember to include a link back to the post you left a comment on.

Game 2:

This is a new one I have thought of to add to the challenge. Many great student posts are being flipped to the #17stubc Flipboard magazine, but I am not sure how many of you have actually checked them out. So here are the instructions for this game.

  1. Click on the Flipboard magazine link here
  2. Click on the title of the post of what looks like an interesting image or a catchy title
  3. You should now be taken to the actual blog post, read it and leave a comment
  4. Come back to the magazine again and repeat two more times

Write a blog post mentioning the blog posts you read and the comment you left.

Get to it – start visiting and leaving quality comments that show you have read the post. 

How many quality comments could you leave this week? Can you leave 10, 20 or maybe 50?

Write a post about the commenting you have done this week or throughout the challenge so far.

  • What have you enjoyed about commenting?
  • What is annoying about commenting?
  • How have you found interesting posts to comment on?
  • Are your posts getting lots of quality comments? Why or why not?

Create a list of great comment starters to help new students to blogging. There are some lists on the web but try to create your own. Here are a couple of examples from Anne Davis:

  •  Another thing to consider is…….
  • I can relate to this…….
  • This makes me think of…….

Write a quick post then include 5 great examples of comments as part of the post – use some interesting comment starters for each comment.