I really enjoyed this article. I think it is great for the kids to be "in" the web world at early ages...
When I was teaching back in Brazil, we had the exact same activity during the year with the kids, but instead of a teddy bear the kids made a doll by using whool, pieces of fabric and cotton.. They named the doll "TonTon", and every friday he would go home with one of the kids. They would have to wrtite a journal about their weekend together, the activities they made, the games they played, and even attach pictures to it.
The kids would also dress him according to what they like to wear and activities they made during the weekend..It was interesting to see the doll coming dressed as a tennis player (because the kid played tennis), or holding a bag of pop corn (because they went to the movies), or even a bathing suit (because they either went to the beach or spent some time at the pool).
The kids were really into this activity. Some were very original on their writing, some others were really original to take the pictures...and they loved the fact they had to write on their journals in both English and Portuguese... In the end of the school year, each class helped the teachers to pick one journal entry for each kid and they created a blog, so the parents and freinds could have acess from home and see how was TonTon's year.
It was one of my favorite activities during that year, and I would use this again at any time in class.
Glad to hear you had your own Ton Ton experience - how do you think your experience would have been the same or different if you had used a blogging tool?
ReplyDeleteIt was really a great experience. In the end of the year they did create a blog for the use of the class. But I do think that kids would "have spent more time" with "Ton Ton" if they had a blog to access every day and see where he was and doing what, instead of waiting for the journal come back to the class. They could even give tips to their peers about what to do on the weekend or something dofferent for them to do so Ton Ton wouldn't participate of the same kind of activities over and over.... =)
ReplyDeleteGreat, thanks for clarifying your response!
ReplyDelete