Grade 5 Exhibition

By organizing ourselves we can take action in our community

May 10, 2012
by Mrs. Fitzgerald
1 Comment

The Blogging Group Reflects on Exhibition 2012

We were the Exhibition Blog group. Our project was to keep a blog about the exhibition and about all the groups from a student’s perspective instead of a teacher’s perspective. We chose this group because it sounded challenging, fun and interesting.

We learned

  • how to write a good blog post
  • how to agree and how to argue productively with our group members
  • how to be more tidy.

Our advice to fourth graders is to be inquirers during the exhibition: ask lots of questions, listen to what the others are saying, and don’t forget to peer edit!

Here are reflection essays from each of the members of the group. To read, please download by clicking on the link.

Hilma’s Exhibition reflection essay

Seo Young’s Exhibition reflection essay

Chloe’s Exhibition reflection essay

 

 

 

April 28, 2012
by Chloe
0 comments

How can you write a good blog post? Go search!

How to write a good blog post?

The reason why we are posting some blog website because we all think that we should share something that is about blogs. We also want to tell people how to make a good blog. If they have any question you can also find it out from those website.

If you want to write a good blog post you should have a look at these websites. They have some good tips about blogging.

  1. http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Blogger
  2. http://www.typepad.com/tips/writing-blog-posts-tips.html
  3. http://codex.wordpress.org
  4. http://portusbhub.com/write-good-unique-posts/

We are happy that we already do many of the things that are suggested in these websites. Can you tell which they are? (Hint: You’ll have to read the linked posts to read the suggestions, then come back here to read through our posts. Good thing there’s a long weekend coming up!)

 

Edited by Seo Young.

 

 

April 27, 2012
by Seo Young
0 comments

How to Optimize Video for a Blog

Video or photos can often make a blog post more interesting and appealing. We have been learning how to optimize photos and video so that they appear on our blog. One problem with videos is that they often can be extremely large and therefore might not show up well, or take very long to load, or even exceed the limitations of your blog platform.

If you want to optimize video for a post on a WordPress blog, follow these five steps.

Shoot
First you should take a video.

Optimize
If video takes too many space, you need to use a program that helps to make your video smaller, for example, Handbrake.

Upload
Next click on the video button.

After you click on the video button you will see a button called select file. Click on that button and select your video.   This is what you will see after pressing the video icon on your editor tools.

Then you would see a URL  if there is, copy the URL. Select ‘Save all changes’.

Code
Type the following code.



Publish
Now press the Publish button then you can see video.

Note: Make sure the podcast plugin is activated.

Edited by Chloe.

April 4, 2012
by admin
2 Comments

Why You Can Write Titles That Grab Attention

The following is a guest post by our IT Coordinator, Tod Baker. Mr. Baker gave us a session last week on how to write engaging titles because our first titles were rather boring. Thanks, Mr. Baker, for the session and the guest post!

Great blog post titles make it difficult for readers to walk away without reading the posts.

Photo by Perry McKenna - http://flic.kr/p/7xsXFh

You can write titles that get people to read your posts. Here’s how.

Key Words
Use key words to get a reader’s attention. If you are writing about an international cookbook, then consider specific words that relate to that topic like yummy, recipe, delicous and food. Look at this title.

“Why Rice Krispie Treats Taste Yummy”

Do you see how the key words make that title tasty?

Start With ‘Why’
Use curiosity to pull them in. Titles that begin with ‘why’ create curiosity in readers. To satisfy their curiosity, they will feel compelled to read your post. If you read the following title, wouldn’t you want to read on to find out why?

“Why The Friendship Group Feels Good”

When you write your next post title, give “why” a try.

Put a Verb In It
Action words make titles interesting. And they help tell your story. I really like the previous title on this blog.

“Cookbook Group Learns 3 Things”

It’s informative and the word ‘learns’ gives it some punch. And there’s a little mystery in the title. I don’t know what they have learned, so I must read on to find out. Thanks to the title, there is no way I’m going to walk away from that post without reading it.

You can do this. In fact, you have already written a handful of great titles. Well done! Give these techniques a try and see how they pull readers into your posts. But these are not the only ways to write effective titles. Share your tips in the comments.

Blog Group

March 29, 2012 by Shehab | 7 Comments

We are the blog group and we think we are going very well. Our goal is to learn how to organize ourselves by making a exhibition blog. That means we share our information that is going in class to other people in our community.

Our group is going well even though we are going through problems slowly.  It is kind of hard for making a blog for the exhibition because every single minute some new news comes and we have to add it.  Another problem is that the groups have to tell us what they’re doing and because we aren’t doing that work so we can make mistakes in blogging about it. We should make sure that we are talking about groups not something else that can be a problem sometimes. Blogging is not as easy as I thought but we are doing our best.

In this picture our group just started our blog.

We were thinking about the kind of blog we wanted, the themes and the widgets.

Edited by : Dylan and Hilma 

March 23, 2012
by Mrs. Fitzgerald
2 Comments

The Blog Writing Process

In order to maintain a high quality of writing for this Grade 5 Exhibition blog, we have instituted a writing process that requires peer-editing and teacher-editing.

We created a peer-editing checklist to help students help each other edit posts. The blogging group students suggested the items on it from viewing samples of blog posts and a checklist for peer-editing from the book 40 Rubrics & Checklists to Assess Reading and Writing (Grade 3-6). We will be testing the checklist this next week to see if we need to modify it to better suit our work.

Each post will be revised in conference by the student blogger and the lead teacher. This peer-editing checklist allows them to concentrate on deeper issues of clarity, sense of audience, and content.

Here is a screenshot of the checklist. The .doc file can be downloaded from the link below.

 

Reference

Fiderer, Adele. 40 Rubrics & Checklists to Assess Reading and Writing. (Grades 3-6). New York: Scholastic Professional Books, 1999. Print.

Blog Peer-editing Checklist

March 15, 2012
by Mrs. Fitzgerald
0 comments

Essential Agreements

  • The blog will focus on the exhibition.
  • Everyone has a role, but everyone can help out.
  • We will post once every day.
  • Each exhibition group has its own story and we will be reporting on each of these stories.
  • Every blog post has a picture or a video if possible.
  • Every blog post must be peer edited by at least one blog member and authorized by a mentor teacher.
  • Our blog posts will try to encourage readers to comment and interact.

This list of essential agreements can also be found on the bottom of the About page.

March 15, 2012
by Seo Young
3 Comments

All Exhibition Groups

IST Grade 5 students started working on our exhibition. We separated into 8 groups.
This is a short explanation for each groups.
  • ESL Group – This group will be making an educational story book. Their lead teacher is Ms. Bjork.
  • Student Handbook – This group will be making a handbook about IST for new students. Their lead teacher is Mr. Kimber.
  • Friendship – This group will be inquiring into friendship and bullying. Their lead teacher is Ms. Wretham.
  • Mini-Olympian – This group will be inquiring into how to play different sports. Their lead teacher is Mr. Kimber.
  • Environment – This group will be inquiring into different types of environments and saving our environments. Their lead teacher is Ms. Wretham.
  • Blog – We will be blogging about the Grade 5 exhibition. Our lead teacher is Mrs. Fitzgerald.
  • Cookbook – This group will be making a cook book about international  foods. Their lead teacher is Ms. Wretham.
  • Top Trumps – This group will be making  trading cards about IST. Their lead teacher is Mr. Kimber.

Edited by Mrs. Fitzgerald