Final Presentation

Check out my final presentation here.  Thanks for your feedback!

WAP 6 - Parental Communications: ClassDojo

I see communication with parents falling into three different categories. The first, I would call “official communications,” and at my school, those all have to be handled by our RenWeb system. Anything that we send to a parent about a student’s progress or behavior or concerns we might have, are required to be sent using that system so a record of the correspondence is kept at the school. If a parent reaches out to us via email about such matters, we are encouraged to respond through RenWeb rather than just reply to their email, so that at least half the conversation is documented. So I have no choice in the matter here.

The second form of parental communication I would call “classroom happenings.” Currently, we send home a newsletter every other week with updates about we have been doing, and any important dates coming up or notices we have to pass on. That letter takes the form of a Google Document with view only permission and the link is sent to parents via RenWeb.

The third form of parental communication I would call “informal day-to-day updates,” where a parent gets a glimpse into their child’s day, and this is the piece I think we are missing out on. We are fortunate that children have to be dropped off and picked up in the classroom by a parent/guardian, so we do have the opportunity to quickly make a personal connection with most parents on most days. But there are some children who take part in our before or after school programs, or are transported by grandparents, and those parents we rarely see. I welcomed the opportunity to investigate ways to include parents in our day-to-day operations.

My initial thought was that we should create a class blog, which would be great, but not really an avenue for more personal individual updates. I looked at a number of lists of top parent messaging apps and saw ClassDojo listed on most of them.  It looked very comprehensive, so I decided to check it out and compare it to SeeSaw which I had investigated for an earlier WAP. 

In ClassDojo there is space for recording individual portfolios, a class story (class blog), and instant messaging options to connect with parents, who can also be invited to view the other areas.

My Demo Class

When I signed up for an account on my laptop, ClassDojo asked for my school and I was surprised to be connected to the “Mentor for my School,” a second grade teacher whom I did not realize used the program. I thought this was a great idea!  Since I was encouraged to go to her with any questions, I did just that to see what she thought of the program. She loves it!  But why?

When I asked that question she raved about the fact that she could use it on all platforms, she could post items to her class story (which is like a classroom blog), her students could post to their portfolios, and she could use it to instant message parents individually. In fact, she had just celebrated a birthday of one of her students that day and showed me the video she sent his parents of the class singing to him.

Screenshot of parent messaging page for my Demo Class

The thing she spoke most excitedly about though, were the behavior management tools that came with ClassDojo and how they helped manage her classroom. She could award or take away points based on behavior and invite parents to view their child’s progress.  The skills were editable, also.  She felt that inviting parents into this process helped them help her with classroom management.

Feedback area - positive points that can be awarded to students

ClassDojo makes daily informal parental communication quite easy, but not perfect.  The thing I am always wary about is the consistency launching such a program would require.  And the “plus” my mentor mentioned of being able to do it all real-time on her phone seems like it could be a “minus.”  I really don’t want my preschoolers to see me on my phone, because I feel it sends the wrong message. They don’t know what I am using my phone for - it all looks like “ignoring” to them.  In all, though, ClassDojo seems like a great solution for inviting parents into our day-to-day activities.

WAP 5 - Global Citizenship: Google Earth and Touchable Earth

I really enjoyed the opportunity to plan a lesson around the theme of global citizenship. At the preschool level I feel like that is all about noticing the ways we are all the same, even though we may be different. We can lay the foundation for this understanding and begin to build in our students the empathy that Alan November reported is a highly desired skill in the workplace.  I started my lesson by reading one of my favorite books, “We Are All Alike… We Are All Different,” by the Cheltenham Elementary School Kindergarteners. 

Then we talked about ways the children in our classroom are the same and different.  I eventually steered the discussion to how we live in different towns but go to the same school.  To demonstrate, I plugged my laptop into the smartboard, and we looked up Google Earth. We used the search and flyover features of Google Earth to compare where children lived in relation to our school. The children loved flying in and out of the towns they live in and ending up at Mount Hope. 

We noticed that their towns were all next to each other.  That’s why they can all come to the same school.  But what about kids in different parts of the world?  What schools to they go to?  Are their schooldays the same or different from ours?  How are they the same and different from us?

We explored the Touchable Earth website to answer these questions. Touchable Earth is an interesting website (and a mobile app available on ipad and iphone) by kids for kids that shows how children live in different parts of the world. There are short videos of children introducing and explaining  different aspects of their lives, organized around the topics of culture, facts, family, friends, play and school. There are many faraway places represented, and we investigated the school and play information of children in South Africa - after first flying there via Google Earth to show just how far away it was from Burlington.

My students were very engaged as we met, via video, as an assortment of South African school children telling about their daily lives.  We focused on the videos about their school and the games they play, and they loved noticing what was similar and what was not.  

Afterwards, I had my preschoolers document what they learned by drawing a picture of what they noticed was the same and what they noticed was different between them and the children of South Africa.  I was so pleased with the results!  Not only were many of my students successful using the higher order thinking skill of compare and contrast, but they were also very interested in the assignment.   

(Check out more student work here.)                                  

I hope to investigate many more places in the same way and maybe even ultimately make our own videos to introduce the world to the children of the Orange Room!