C4K Summary for October

My first C4K for the month of October was on the blog of Henry Robert, a student at Cottage Hill Christian Academy here in Mobile, Alabama. His most recent post was about what he thinks should change about our local schools. His suggestions were starting the day later, free teacher-given tutoring in the evenings, and a four day school week to allow for an extra day of rest, tutoring, or parent conferences on Fridays. I was impressed with his reasoning and thought process, but I reminded him not to forget about the teachers. I nicely reminded him that they like to go home sometimes too.

My next C4K was on Andrew's blog. Andrew is a fifth grade student who lives in Illinois. His most recent blog post was in response to an article he read in Scholastic News. This article discussed whether or not children should lose recess time for bad behavior. Andrew agrees that losing recess is a fair and effective punishment for bad behavior because recess is the best part of the day for most students. He thinks that if they have to miss recess because of bad behavior, they will try harder to behave appropriately so that next time they can play at recess. I do agree that most students don't want to miss recess, but sometimes that's the only break a class will get during the day. Also, if a child is misbehaving, the chance to get out and run might be exactly what they need.

My third C4K for this month was supposed to be on a student named Quarian A. in Ms. Naugle's fourth grade class in New Orleans. Unfortunately, Quarian did not have any posts on his blog. Consequently, I chose another of his classmates, Jenifer M., to comment on. For this blog post, Ms. Naugle's class wrote about an experience they had helping out with Pre-K students through a big buddy/little buddy program. Jenifer's little buddy was a Pre-K student named Melik. They worked together on Dot Day projects such as writing their names with Bingo stampers, playing Twister, eating donut holes, and coloring a picture. What I thought was cool was that after they completed their pictures, they were able to use an app called ColAR Mix. Using this app, they could view their drawings in 3D. How cool! I've already downloaded the app to see what it's like. I've also written some of these Dot Day ideas down for use in my future classroom. Finally, I complimented Jenifer on her writing. She really did a great job.

My last C4K for October was on the blog of a sixth year student named Harlem in Auckland, New Zealand. He wrote a post about the importance of protecting yourself from the sun. He advises his readers to always wear a fully covering hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen. I told him that I live near the beach and agreed with his advice. However, he did have quite a few errors. At times, I had to re-read to make sure I was getting the point of what he was trying to say. I told him that his information was accurate, but that he should take his time when writing and proofread his work when he was done in order to avoid mistakes.