Day’s details posted for all to see

Some kids go home and tell their parents about their day, what they learned, who they talked to at recess and what they ate for lunch, but in one elementary school classroom, all that’s online every day.

In Cassie Thurston’s second- and third-grade combination class at Moffett Elementary School, students are learning the art of blogging and are being introduced into a whole new world of transitions through the class’ daily blog.

“I love writing blogs. Writing is my favorite subject,” 8-year-old Devin Hughes said. “I like that I can be creative in my own special way.”

Devin was one of the first students to have a blog published online. The class starting writing the daily blog as a group until the students learned what went into a blog entry. Now the teacher is picking one student’s entry each day and publishing it online, but eventually one student a day will write an entry at home and e-mail it in, Thurston said.

The students write all the entries out on paper and Thurston posts them online. For now, the students write out ideas for the blog with a work sheet where they fill in an introduction sentence, main ideas, details of their day and conclusions using transitions.

Transitions were something the class struggled with, Thurston said. The novice writers would begin every sentence with “first,” “next” or “then,” but now they have an entire poster of transition words the class has come up with.

Second-grader Andrew Leung, 7, said transitions were difficult, but from practicing his blogs, he has learned a bunch.

“It’s kind of hard, but it’s fun,” Andrew said. “You’re doing third-grade stuff, because it’s a [combination] class.”

Working on their writing after lunch, the students prepared to meet with a buddy and refine their work. Standing behind their chairs with the day’s blog work sheet and pencils in hand, the students waited for the two magic words: “mingle, mingle.”

As with the gun at the start of a race, the students set off around the classroom looking for a buddy. With the students walking at first, Thurston soon instructed them to skip, march and then stop and find a friend.

Sitting “knee to knee, eye to eye,” the kids orally rehearsed with their partners and then picked one of their entries to write on a large Manila paper — or combine the two blogs, as one student suggested.

“When I woke up this morning, I had bad hair and I was really tired, but I still went to school,” 7-year-old Jon Packard read his opening aloud to his buddy, Andrew.

The two decided to try combining their day and chose Jon’s opening. Sitting on the floor with their Manila paper in front of them, the two took turns writing out their submission in green marker. Neither has had an entry published yet, but Andrew is excited by the idea.

“I’ll go home and then I’ll check it and then I’ll be like ‘Hey Mom! Hey Mom! Come and see!’,” he said.