This week we've started our Weekly Blogger Challenge.  Inspired by this post: Student Blogging Challenges written by blogging teacher extraordinaire Mrs. Ripp, we've decided to start our weekly after school activity with a Challenge.  The students are using their Kidblogs to share ideas...this week's challenge is motivated by this exciting Skype in the Classroom project with polar explorer Mark Wood.

Check out our comments:

http://kidblog.org/MsMelaniesClass/
 
What would you do if you were a polar explorer?

We've added Speakpipe to our blog which is a Voicemail widget where blog visitors can leave live recordings.
We were excited to discover two new voice messages this week.  One from Mr Richards--the Headmaster of our school and another one from the students in Room 7 from New Zealand.  You can hear their recordings here:

listen to ‘Mr Richards--Headteacher at BIS, Phuket’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Room 7--Vardon School New Zealand’ on Audioboo


Would you like to leave a live voice message for us?

Chinese New Year Celebrations

On Friday we celebrated Chinese New Year in school. A local dance troop came to school and put on a lion dance show for students.

Each lion is controlled by two men who move the head and body. Sometimes one man jumps on the other man's shoulders to make the lion look tall. The lions dance to rhythmic drumming that is very loud!

2013 is the year of the snake.  The snake is wise and can sometimes be greedy.

In Thailand we celebrate the new year with loud crackers in the streets!

What is your Chinese zodiac?

Quadblogging

Today we talked about Quadblogging and shared a student created video as well as this video by Quadblogging creator, Dave Mitchell, to give us a better idea of what it means to 'Quadblog.'


We talked about quality comments and brainstormed ways to create quality comments including:

• asking questions
• using full sentences
• making connections to your own life

We added our quadblog timetable to this blog and made our first official visit to Davyhulme Primary School in England; we also had a go at making some of our own quality comments. I think Quadblogging is a great way to share ideas and I enjoy seeing the fantastic ways teachers are using blogs in their classrooms for creative learning.
What do you like about Quadblogging?

Exclamation marks!!! and CAPITAL LETTERS

Today, before exploring some class blogs in Canada and the US, we talked about the differences between communicating face-to-face versus on-line (via messaging, 'newsfeeds' and blog posts). We watched a video and considered why and how using capital letters and too many exclamation marks might be misinterpreted by our friends.

Our voices, our facial expressions and our body language were some of the reasons we agreed make emotions easier to 'read' in-person.

How do you think this might change in the future?

Cloud Talk

Term 2 has just begun at BIS, Phuket and we have a new set of students taking part in our after school blogging activity. There was so much to talk about and investigate today...we tinkered on Edmodo in our newly formed group, we visited our class blog for the first time and we even had time to comment on another class blog in England. You can see our Cloud Talk comment here: http://davyhulme.primaryblogger.co.uk/topic/angry-birds-art-on-the-ipad/

But, before we visited the blogs we brainstormed some ideas about blogging and shared our thoughts on Wallwisher:

Created with Wallwisher

What do you think a blog is?

Please read our blog guidelines and leave a comment below:

Loy Krathong in Thailand

In school last week we celebrated Loy Krathong, the Thai Celebration of Light. It is a fun day to celebrate because we get to make Krathongs, which are floating flower boats. A krathong is made out of banana leaves and flowers we add candles and incense. When we float our krathong we make a wish and send all of our bad luck away.

This week the children have created their own word clouds to write about Loy Krathong...Please visit our kidblog site, have a look at everyone's fantastic word clouds and add a comment: http://kidblog.org/MsMelaniesClass/


Loy krathong on PhotoPeach