I hope students and classes are finding these free choice weeks useful. It is a chance to catch up but also time to show off your passions. I am also using it as a chance to show you more blogs to visit, instead of writing a separate post for that.

Mentors, how are you going? Have you been visiting blogs regularly and leaving comments? Many thanks for taking the time to do this and I am sure the students appreciate that.

My passion post for this week

I have never enjoyed gardening but now that I have retired, I seem to get out there more often. I now have 4 vegetable patches and the following growing well – strawberries, brocollini, cabbages (with their moth grubs), brussel sprouts, lettuces, radishes, carrots, snow peas, runner beans, butter beans and tomatoes. I have also been out weeding the plant garden area. I am trying to attract some more smaller birds to my garden, so mainly have Australian native plants. This might be difficult though as the next door neighbours all have dogs, cats and chickens, so the smaller birds might be too frightened to settle on a shrub. Do you have your own garden at home?

So what is your passion for this week? Books, girl’s education, global climate change, Hurricane Sandy, One Direction, Lego, caffeine and kids, cyberbullying, reality shows – wow too many to think about.

Science games to look at, play and review

Animation

  • Automatoon will not work with Internet Explorer but great way to create an animated movie.
  • Another great site is goanimate – teachers there is an education version of this as well
  • Kerpoof is great for all ages

Visit these blogs that have left pingbacks or trackbacks over the last month or so

CJ on gala day, Nick on top ten travel destinations, Chloe on Amanda Todd cyberbullying, Amy and her sayings, Chris looked at his clustrmap, Hannah loves free rice, 5G Legendz tessellate (and teacher learns to pingback), Bridget enjoys the season Fall, James’ mum asks a question, Esha talks about inventing, Mrs Flowers class and M&Ms, Matt on trees, Becky on endangered animals, Nickolas on Mars Rover, Dawso on micro-organisms, Hannah on horses, Jess on astronomy, Kara on hurricanes, Isabelle makes an erupting volcano, Jess wrote about Fred Hollows, Esha wrote about dolphins, Morgan likes microscopes, Harry hangs with a moose, Angie quizzed her noodle, Chris looks at cells, Natalie thinks about future technologies, Kaela created an A-Z of science

Visit some classes that are the same grade as you.

Image source: Miss W – will be in flickr account soon.

29 thoughts on “Challenge 8 – freedom again

  1. Can you please explain pingbacks again because we don’t seem to be doing it correctly. We’ve responded to quite a few challenges but don’t appear on the pingback.

    Thanks,
    Mrs. McKelvey

  2. Dear Miss W,
    This is the first Student Blogging Challenge that my students have done with their own blogs and they are LOVING it!! They can’t wait to start blogging each week. I think adding the free choice weeks has made the pace of keeping up with the tasks much less frantic and we feel as if we are making the most of the Challenge this time.
    Thank you so much!
    Ms N & Year 5

    1. G’day Mrs N and students,
      So glad they have got a lot out of it. I think I will keep with the every second week as free choice. Thanks for the positive comments though.

    1. G’day Amy,
      There are no special awards for the blogging challenge but in November/December each year, Edublogs runs an award where you can nominate the best student and class blog. This will be mentioned in one of the next two challenges. So make sure you are out visiting lots of other blogs to make comparisons.

  3. Hello dear all!
    My students are on their autumn holidays this week. I think they are enjoying the break and are unlikely to publish any posts. But they are not to blame because they have alredy done some great work. For example, Alexander created his dream maths classroom model (kidblog.org/MrsFlowersClass3/alexander852114/my-dream-school-mathematical-class/); Tatyana studied the maths dictionary online and shared her impressions(kidblog.org/MrsFlowersClass3/tatyana595170/maths/); Julia started a series of postes devoted to Russian cities and towns (kidblog.org/MrsFlowersClass3/julia698597/welcome-to-vyborg/; kidblog.org/MrsFlowersClass3/julia698597/welcome-to-novosibirsk-in-russia/); Rustam used the PhotoPeach tool to make a slideshow displaying his village (kidblog.org/MrsFlowersClass3/99c50014-d41f-4558-9d76-5990eab35e11/my-village/) etc.
    So, I’ve decided to take the initiative and represent my kids in challenge 8 (if you don’t mind). You’ve suggested so many interesting ideas to discuss (thank you very much for that)! I’ve published a post about gardening which is an inalienable part of Russian life and culture (kidblog.org/MrsFlowersClass3/olgak/gardening/).
    I’m sure if my students were telling the story, the ideas would be absolutely the same. I really hope you’ll enjoy reading and watching.
    Bye for now.

    1. Hi Esha,
      Only two more weeks of challenges, but you can always go back and get some ideas for posts from reading the previous challenges.

  4. I am absolutely loving these blogging ideas but am a little sad because only a few of the bloggers that I am mentoring are actually “blogging” and taking lead from these posts. Their Teacher has them sharing their poetry and writing but there is no narrative dialogue which actually makes it really hard to engage with the students. Any tips?

    1. Hi Leanne,
      I visited a few of the blogs and noticed the poetry. Most also had their about me page. Sometimes classes might only get to their blog once a week and that group started later than the others. Just keep visiting and find a post to leave a comment on. Many thanks for volunteering. If you want to visit others on the list that don’t have a mentor that would also be great.

  5. I think this challenge yourself blog is awesome. I love how you get to post about your passions. It is fun and interesting learning about other avtivites like gardening.

    How did all of this get started?

    1. G’day Angie,
      I have been running these challenges for over 4 years. This is the ninth 9th set of challenges. Many are very similar, but often it is different students doing the activities each time. Glad you are enjoying them.

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