Saturday, November 5, 2011

Quality Commenting: Family Blogging Month - Week 1






Family Blogging Month has been going strong for one week.  The participation and quality of the comments is simply extraordinary!

(Click to enlarge any comment.)










Royce has a conversation going with his grandparents in Long Island, New York! 





 































Lots of wonderful comments from family members. Many offering terrific tips!







Ellie and her father are having an exchange!
 



Not only have the students, former students, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends been leaving quality comments, but so have the family pets! It all started when Maya's dog Jasper left a comment. Soon other dogs, cats, and even fish were joining in!















Alyssa's cat left a wonderful comment! We were able to use it to teach a mini lesson about apostrophes! Thanks, Bolt! 






Mrs. Yollis was thrilled to get a comment from one of her original group of bloggers. Taylor S. is now in middle school, but popped back in with a comment! Miriam, who is now in fourth grade, has been a regular commenter as well!















Lots and lots of great contributions to the online community! Wow!



























The Our World, Our Stories blog has been popular all week.

























What has been the best part about Family Blogging Month so far? 


Have you commented back to anyone?

Try to get a conversation going!  

18 comments:

  1. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    The idea to teach your students to communicate with the bloggers
    all over the world is wonderful.

    Your second idea to involve in the process your student's
    relatives is also good. They will pay more attention to their
    children. They can give them good ideas to write interesting
    blogs. To know more means to read more.

    You urge their brains to work. Working brains, that is what
    America needs and that is your third great idea.

    I am glad that my granddaughter, Sarah, has such a good teacher.

    From,
    Sarah's grandmother

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Grandma Mila,

    Thank you for commenting on our blog! The way you wrote your comment is step up to writing format. We are learning to write paragraphs in class. I hope you visit our blog again soon.
    Love,
    Sarah

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oliver (Sammy's Dog)November 6, 2011 at 4:23 PM

    Dear Jasper,

    Rffff. My name is Oliver and I am Sammy's dog. Rfff. I am the one that hates Halloween! I keep hearing the doorbell ring and all that I see are scary costumes. Most of the time they have baskets that are filled with chocolate candy... yum... but I don't want to get too sick.

    Sincerely,

    Oliver (Sammy's Dog)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Mrs. Yollis and Class,

    What a wonderful idea to blog with your family members. I have been enjoying your Skype sessions with students in other states and countries. In fact, I didn't know that each state has a state insect!
    I was especially happy to learn that the honey bee is Georgia's state insect because I am a bee keeper in northern California.

    I am curious, how many of the students in your class have traveled to other states or to another country?

    Thanks for all the great information. I look forward to future blogs!

    Lauren, Sasha's aunt

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    We are Barbara, Kelly's grandmother and Gladys, Kelly's great aunt. This is our first 'blog' posting ever!
    We would like to share a little bit about growing up on a farm in Louisiana.
    We were nine children and our house and cotton field was right next to the woods. We had to look out for snakes, insects and wild animals.
    There was a lake close and we had a tire swing in the big tree right next to it.Swinging was so much fun, although the rope did break from time to time and you would land in the water.
    Life was different for children when we were young. We all had to help daddy in the cotton fields after school and after supper we had to do chores and do homework.

    Grandma Barbara: Daddy would take me hunting at night. I would sit on his shoulders, his headlamp would show us the way and he'd carry his rifle.One day we saw a bear who followed us home and my dad had to shoot him. Imagine that!

    Great aunt Gladys: My favorite thing in the summer time was going fishing with our dad. The bayou was right in front of the house and we spent all day in a little canoe waiting for fish to bite.
    We were a large family and had so much fun together! I loved growing up in the country!

    When we were 9 and 13 our parents took all their savings and moved us to California. Imagine all the siblings in one car!
    In California, our cousins had to teach us how to loose our 'country twang' and speak the Californian way :0)

    To Kelly and Mrs. Yollis students:
    Please treasure your family and friends and be sure to be loyal to them. Remember the main ingredient of friendship and love is trust!

    Grandma Barbara and Great Aunty Gladys

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear grandma and great auntie,

    Thank you for posting for the first time!
    I LOVE your post and enjoyed your stories so much!
    It is cool that you had a tire swing. Did you know that swinging is one of my favorite activities?
    It was exciting and fun to learn about the family history and life on the country.
    What kind of chores did you have? Was working in the field hard? I think that was a very busy daily schedule!
    Grandma- when you saw the bear, were you mortified?
    It was so great seeing you today and I love you very much!
    Love,

    Kelly

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    When I visited my in laws today, little did I know that family blogging month would spark an afternoon of amazing stories and lessons in (family) history.
    I wished Barbara's and Glady's post could contain all the vivid images, jokes and excitement of today's family get together. I sat on the edge of my seat most of the time.
    I wished grandma and auntie could come visit the classroom some time and share.
    Thank you, Barbara and Gladys- I love you!
    Thank you Mrs. Yollis class for this wonderful blog :0)

    Henny

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Mom,

    Your comment is spectacular!

    I would love for you to leave more comments on the class blog. I am very exited about the rest of the family to blog also.

    I have some questions for you:

    • How many comments do you think you will post?

    • Was that your first comment that your post?

    Your son,
    Brenden

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ Dad,

    Thank you for commenting on Mrs. Yollis' classroom blog. It was awesome! I was very excited when you commented.I hope you can comment again. I also hope you can ask your friends to comment too.

    This is what I loved about your post: You made a connection, it made sense, there were no misspellings, there was perfect capitalization, and it was very long.


    From your son,
    Aidan

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dear Mrs. Yollis and class,


    I am Atrina's mom. It is very interesting to see all family and friends participating in the family blogging month, although for many, it must be their first time.

    I myself am very new to this too.It is hard to keep up with all the new technology these days.It is amazing how much easier it is to communicate with the rest of the world using these new tools.

    Atrina and I have learnt a lot from this process. We love to read the posts and talk about the skype sessions.It is a lot of fun.

    I am looking forward to reading the new posts and learning new things every day.

    My sincere thanks to Mrs. Yollis for her wonderful educational blog.

    From,
    Asheem, (Atrina's mom)

    ReplyDelete
  11. @ Mrs Yollis,

    I think that blogging with family is a good idea because you can communicate with people when you are not near them. I am going to invite my relatives to join our blog. I have family members in Australia, Peru and Uruguay. I wonder if my family in Peru and Uruguay will answer in Spanish. I also have very close friends in Chicago who I will also invite to blog.

    From,
    Alexandra

    ReplyDelete
  12. @ Lauren (Aunty Laur),

    That was a great quality comment! You are an amazing blogger! I forgot that Uncle Pat was a bee keeper! Do your bees ever make purple honey? Thank you for leaving a comment! I l♥ve you.

    L♥ve,
    Sasha

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Ms. Yollis!
    My name is Courtney Holifield. I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. All I can say is wow! What an impressive blog! I love the idea of family blogging! I can see that many parents appreciate being able to keep up with what is going on in their child’s school. I loved that some of the families pretend to comment as if they were the family pet. So cute!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Leon (Kelly's brother)November 14, 2011 at 1:58 PM

    Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    My name is Leon Cain and I am Kelly Hicks's brother. I am currently a junior at the University of Southern California studying International Relations and hope to attend law school after I graduate. Before coming to USC, I was a student at your school, the local middle school, and high school. I think it is great that your class is learning how to use online resources like blogs. As a college student, I can tell you that computer skills are extremely important for success in not only elementary school, but also middle school, high school, and beyond. I look forward to keeping up with all of your class's posts!

    Best Regards,
    Leon

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hello Mrs Yollis and her wonderful students.
    I am Kelly's cousin from Germany.
    At the moment I am studing Mediadesign in Cologne, therefore I really like the idea of learning about blogging and the usage of internet in an early stage of life.
    If some of you are interestet in Grafic and Mediadesign you are welcome to have a look at the two links I posted below. They will show you some work I did at University this year.
    I hope you are all good and have a successesful week.

    Love,
    Janet

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVjPlsAp7c0&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqcoYSGzZnQ&feature=related

    ReplyDelete
  16. Dear brothy (Leon),
    Thank you for commenting on our classroom blog!
    I really want to go to USC too after high school.
    What is college like? Who is your favorite teacher?
    Is college hard?
    I love school and my teacher Mrs. Yollis and I hope you love college too!
    I love you lots!

    Love,
    Kelly

    ReplyDelete
  17. Dear Janetty,

    Thank you so much for posting.
    I checked out your links and they were AWESOME.
    Did you make any more? What do you want to be after college?
    I would love to visit Germany and see you again. I miss you. Can you show me your college and your apartment next time?
    I love you so much.

    Love and kisses,
    Kelly

    ReplyDelete
  18. Dear Mrs. Yollis and Jake,

    This is my second blog and I really like it. I am Jake's Aunt Jeanne.

    I know that Jake is spending Thanksgiving in Oregon and there should be lots of rain so all of the grass is very green. The scenery is especially pretty on the route.

    Jake, when you drive to Oregon to see Noni, how many big cities do you go through and do you go through any more states?

    Blogging is so much fun because you can talk to everyone without leaving your home or schoolroom.
    I follow your blogs everyday and I am happy to see that everyone is so involved.

    Love,
    Aunt Jeanne

    ReplyDelete

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