Mrs. Campagna's Class

A mind is like a parachute, it only works when open. -Frank Zappa

Baby Evelyn at 3 Months!

Hi Students!  It certainly has been a long time since I have checked in with you. I hope that your 2015 ended with lots of fun and learning and that you came back to school in 2016 ready to go!  I think about you all the time and often check in with Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Petro and Mrs. Balewski to see how you all are doing.  I was so excited to see Reagan at church last Sunday!! I thought I would post a few photographs for you of Baby Evelyn. She has gotten so big!!

Here she is at one month:

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Two months:

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Three months:

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Now, at three months she can grab her toys and hold on to them and she is smiling and making lots of “talking” noises! We are waiting excitedly for her first giggle which should happen soon! She can now hold her head up very well, but can’t sit up on her own yet. She is such a happy little baby Mr. Russ and I are so thankful that you all were willing to share me so that I could spend this time with her at home! 🙂

I know you are all so busy with learning and I don’t want to interrupt your day, but we will find a day to come in and visit soon.  I hope you all are working hard and being your best (not that I have any doubts about that!).  I can’t wait to see you all soon!

Love,
Mrs. C.

 

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Using Google Classroom

Today our class learned how to use Google Classroom !  We had a great time learning how to log in, answering a Science question and learning how to create an assignment in Google Docs straight from our Google Classroom site.

Our first assignment was to write a fantasy story based on the book Scarecrow Pete by Mark Moulton.

peteIn Scarecrow Pete, the two main characters become friends and the author does a beautiful job  of describing the setting, problem and solution.  I wonder if my students remember why Mrs. Campagna loves this book so much ?  Comment below if you think you know!  It has something to do with the lesson the boy character learns 🙂

We practiced our typing and our fantasy writing skills as each student worked diligently to write their stories.  Soon we will learn how to submit or turn in our assignments!

If you have read this story and remember the lesson, don’t forget to comment below !

If you are working on your first assignment here is reminder of how to log in:

1. Go to Google Chrome

2. Log in with your school email

3. Visit the site   classroom.google.com

4. Click on Mrs. Campagna’s Class!

Have fun!

 

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Blogging Challenge #5 : Food and Culture

One of the most wonderful things about blogging with Edublogs is the Student Blogging Challenge and the opportunity it has presented for connecting with students from other countries.  We want to learn as much as possible about these other students!  This week’s blogging challenge centers around food- yum!  Specifically food that is special to our community or country.  Click on this link to learn about two foods that you might see in Australia.   These are foods that we don’t have here in the U.S.! 

Here are your two tasks  for this week:

Activity 1:

Create a survey in Google Drive (use your school email address to log in to google.com

Try to make your survey at least 3 questions!  This survey should be to collect information from your visitors about what kind of food they eat or how their food is different from the food that we eat.  We will talk more about this in class on Wednesday!

Activity 2: 

Write a post about foods that you like to eat.  Remember that the goal this week is to improve our writing and that we expect a good juicy post with a topic sentence, at least 5 details and a closing sentence.  

 

I encourage you to visit the list of student blogs here and see if they have created surveys or written posts about foods that they like!  You may get some new ideas or make some connections!! We can’t wait to see what you have to say  .

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Blogging Challenge #3! Adding Images

 

 

 

My new laptop: Black Asus EEE PC Nathanael Coyne via Compfight

Think back to when Mrs. Martin visited our class. Do you remember what she said about adding images to your blogs?  She emphasized that adding images to your blogs makes them 80% more likely to be read!! Wow!

This week’s blogging challenge centers around safely and responsibly adding images to your blog.  What do you think I mean by safely and responsibly?

By safely , I mean that you need to be adding images that do not reveal any personal information about you that is not safe to share on the web.

By responsibly  I mean two things: 1) That you are not sharing any images of people who may not want their images shown and that you are generally being kind and conscientious to those you may blog about.  2) That you are sharing images that are ALLOWED to be shared.

Let’s talk more about that!

One way we are going to learn to share images responsibly is to understand that not all images shown on the internet are yours to use for free! We learned about this in Digital Passport also!

This week, we added the PLUGIN “Compfight” to our blogs so that we can try to use these plugin to add images responsibly. 

Use this plugin to help you complete your challenge for this week. The other option is to add your own personal images.

Now, for the challenge!  There are two parts!!!

Part 1: Choose one of the two options below to blog about:

Write a post about a favorite time with your family.

Include an image using the COMPFIGHT plugin or a personal image from home.  If using an actual image of your own family, you need permission from your parents and everyone shown in the image. Make sure you mention in the post that you have permission to use this and that it is copyright to your family so no one else may use it without your family’s permission.

Write a post about your parents or grandparents

You could interview your parents or grandparents and find out more about their life growing up- maybe even as a 3rd grader!   Find an image of something that was happening in the world during that person’s lifetime. Remember to give credit!

 

Part 2: Widget Crazy!

I know many of us have gone crazy with our widgets. Check out this post with a list of 42 different widgets!  Try to add a new widget on your blog (Mrs. C. can help you do this!)  and write a post about it! 

 

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Blogging Challenge 2: Commenting!

 

One of the first things we learned about in blogging was how to write quality comments. We are still practicing writing strong comments !  Here are some guidelines that we discussed about writing strong comments:

  • Use a friendly letter format (greeting, body, closing)
  • Read the post carefully before you comment.
  • Add some new information or make a connection to what the blogger is talking about!
  • give a compliment!
  • Ask questions to keep the conversation going!
  • Check your comment before you publish it for C.U.P.S.

Every time you write a comment, try to include these elements!

For our 2nd Blogging Challenge, your task has 2 parts. Follow along carefully to complete the WHOLE  challenge!

Part One:

1. Follow this link to see the list of other students participating in the Student Blogging Challenge.

2. Find 3 people that you have something in common with and comment on their blogs!

3. Remember to add your blog address (URL) to the end of your comment so that your new friend can reply to the comment you made by visiting YOUR blog!  For example, I would add   mrscampagna.edublogs.org  after the closing of my comment.

Example:

Dear Student,

What a nice job you did on your post! I loved the way you checked for CUPS! I wonder what you did after this event? I can’t wait to hear more!

Love,
Mrs. C.

mrscampagna.edublogs.org/

Part Two:

Write a post on your blog about how to write good comments!  Please title this post: “Blogging Challenge 2: Comments” so that I can easily find it! 

 

 

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Blogging Challenge 1: Creating an Avatar!

Yesterday our students had an opportunity to experiment with our first blogging challenge. Today we reviewed how they could successfully add an avatar to their blog.  See the video below to follow the steps we took using the site BUILD YOUR WILD SELF.  We had so much fun today creating and experimenting with different avatars to represent ourselves online!

How to Build and Add Your Avatar on PhotoPeach

This is the FIRST PART to your blogging challenge.  Here is part two:

By next Tuesday, each student should have created an avatar to represent themselves online.  Now, your job is to choose two family members and create an avatar for each of them!  Think hard about which avatar site you want to use and how you think these people should be represented!  Once you have created these avatars and saved them, write a post to describe the person and why you chose the avatar you did.  Answer these questions:

1. Who did you choose to create an avatar for and why?

2. What inspired the details of the avatar and how do they relate to the real person?

Here are a list of different avatar building sites you can experiment with.  Have fun and we can’t wait to see and share all of your beautiful (or weird?!) creations!

Creating your avatar  (from the Edublogs site)

Most schools don’t allow students to use photos of themselves on blogs and get their students  to create avatars that is representative of them.

Here are just some of the online tools you can use to create avatars:

  1. Build your wild self
  2. DoppelMe
  3. Dream Avatar creator
  4. Mini-mizer – lego avatar
  5. The Hero Factory  hero avatar
  6. Mr PicassoHead
  7. Simpsons Avatar
  8. WeeMee
  9. Wimp yourself

Some students draw their avatars then take a photo of the drawing to use for their avatars.

Once you’ve created the avatar you can save the avatar by either:

  1. Right click on the avatar and select “Save Image as” or “Save Picture as” to save a copy on your computer
  2. Take a screenshot of your image (use the Snipping Tool or PrnScrn)

 

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Student Blogging Challenge 2015!

This week we will begin completing our Edublogs Student Blogging Challenges!  The Edublogs Student Blogging Challenge 2015 is a really neat way to challenge yourself to learn something new about blogging every week. This gives us practice not just in our technological skills, but in our reading, writing and research skills!  Not only that, but this is a fantastic way to meet students in your age group or grade from AROUND THE WORLD! Before we can begin completing the challenges though, we need to register for the SBC 2015 by filling out the form on this page .  Once you have filled out the form , in the next day or two, you should be able to visit the site again and see your name in the list under the tab called OCTOBER 2015 STUDENTS on the top of the page.

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As soon as you have registered, click here to find out what your first challenge is.  I will give you a hint! There is some reading involved, and then you will have an opportunity to make your very own avatar !!! Make sure you carefully read the post though, so that you can follow the instructions more easily!

Have fun and happy blogging!

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So Many Firsts!

           We had many firsts today!  We had our first Bank Day and our first Rock Star Party!  We also watched our first Newsdepth!  Whew! What a busy day!

In our classroom our Rock Star system is one of the many things that make our classroom special.  The students work very hard every day to be their best and think often about how they can go above and beyond, do more and try harder.  We have had so many Rock Stars already this month and it is only our first month!  We may even have the entire class at the Rock Star Party next month! Wow!  Here are some photos from today’s party to celebrate our September Rock Stars!  The theme was a cupcake decorating party 🙂

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Today was also our first Bank Day!  Bank Day happens once a month and this is a time for us to enter all of our information and money ; paychecks, fines, Bonus Bucks, and Rent, all into our Bank Books (ledgers). In our class the students learn how to budget and plan about saving and spending their money. They also practice multiple digit addition and subtraction while learning how to enter deposits and withdraws into their banking ledgers. We even learn how to write checks!! So many life lessons and we are only 8 and 9 years old!  See the photos below and a special thanks to all of the parent helpers for this Bank Day: Mrs. Laki, Mrs. Coughanour, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, Mrs. Flynn, and Mrs. Prugar! We couldn’t have done it without you!

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Lastly, we watched our first Newsdepth. Newsdepth is a special news program for students.  They talk about all the current events in the world, our country and even in Ohio!  We learn about various professions, Science, Social Studies, Geography, Math and so much more from watching Newsdepth. Here is the link to this week’s show if you want to share it with your friends and family!  Don’t forget to find the link on the web page that says “Petting Zoo”  to see all the entertaining animal videos!

 

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Special Olympics and Making Connections

The last few weeks during Reading, we have talked a lot about making connections. We have talked about text to text, text to self, and text to world connections. Why do we do this? How does making connections make you a stronger reader?

It is time to start making connections around the world! Your job this week is to comment on this blog using good, strong comments.

Think about the story we read about the Special Olympics and watch the video below. How are you similar to the young people that participate in the Special Olympics? How it must feel to train for these events? Think about the challenges these Olympians have faced. Visit this link to see a video about Susie Doyen. Can you make any connections to her feelings or experience? Write a comment about your thoughts!

Remember to use C.U.P.S., use an address like “Dear Class,” or “Hello Friends,” and end with a closing such as “Love, Mrs. C.” or “Your Friend, Sevey”.

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Writing Strong Comments

One place that we like to start when learning how to blog in Room 815 is learning how to write strong comments. This is our first lesson on how what we write is written to a global audience and so we always want to make sure we are doing our best work. We also want to make sure that we are not oversharing.  We begin by writing comments and when we feel confident, we will know we are ready for our OWN BLOGS!!!  Watch the video below by Mrs. Yollis class. Your job is to write a comment below and include two things you learned about commenting from watching the video or from our discussions in class. I can’t wait to see all of our ideas combined!

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