Can you believe it’s almost Christmas? It’s crazy how fast this year has flown by! I was almost sad to bring out the North Pole Express Mailbox and see the first letters from Glitter arrive.
 | Thankfully, Glitter has join the technology world and has begun to send emails. You see, he works in the North Pole Mailroom and he edits all of the letters before they are placed in front of Santa. His partner, Sparkle, is out sick so he needed a little help editing letters. Glitter sends emails to our class which contain letters that must be edited. Since they are in an email format, I can copy and paste them into a document and assign kids portions of the letter to edit. I am thankful that Glitter has moved into the 21st century and gives me a chance to use the awesome Chromebooks that we have in our classroom! |
| Every year, Glitter challenges us to write about Christmas Traditions we celebrate with our families. I learn many things about our students during that time. This year, I decided to have the students do a little research before they started explaining their own Christmas Traditions and hopefully start heading in the student centered learning direction. Normally I have students use Google Slides as a platform for research. It’s an amazing tool with research buttons built in, but it’s difficult for all of the students to work on one slide show without “accidentally” deleting something off of someone else’s slides. I decided to try something new. |  |
 | Google Sites has new formatting and it is super simple. Plus, it’s not as easy to “accidentally” change slides. I wanted all of the students to work in groups and have access to the same site, but still have an assigned section to work on with a group. We started out using our recent trip to Austin as a subject on our first website. You can see that website here. Please keep in mind, we were learning the basics, and the site never was finished. |
| After we learned the basics of how to build a Google Site, I gave my students an assignment to search for Christmas traditions. Then, they had to put what they learned into special sections on their Google Site. Historically, there are many screams during this working time while working in Google Slides because something somehow disappears. This time they all had their own page, and they respectfully stayed in their own areas. I think it helped that they couldn’t see the interesting things happening on the left side of the screen on someone else’s slide. |  |
 | In reading, our students are working on non-fiction text. So, we were able to discuss the difference in heading and subheadings and how we should organize. Some students did an amazing job organizing their pages. They didn’t need any help creating a publishable site. Others needed a little guidance and help with organization and headings. This was a great activity for our students to own their own learning. They were able to choose a research area, do that research, and publish that research in a format that would be accessible around the world. That’s my favorite part! Editing just got real! |
Check out our Christmas Traditions website here! Merry Christmas from our classroom to yours!
 | This post was written by Amy Scaff, A.C. Williams 4th Grade Writing Techer, and iCoach. |
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