Special Assignment

I have read and reviewed a blog by a teacher named Mr. McClung. He is an 8th grade teacher in Woodland Jr. High in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He teaches several subjects. They include social studies, Arkansas history, computer applications and cross country track. You can tell by reading Mr. McClung’s blog that he is very organized, he enjoys teaching, he is very involved with his class, school and community and is ready to grow his students in the classroom and outside the classroom.

Mr. McClung’s rules are very inspiring. They are firm yet they create an organized learning environment. My favorite part of his rules are his “Expectations”, “Stay Positive”. What a great way to start the rules. He makes it clear to the students what he expects out of them and then lays out the rules. I am a firm believer in rules. Even now when I substitute for teachers at my son’s school, I lay out my expectations and rules for the class while I am in place of their teacher. I believe in doing that you, first get the respect of the students, secondly it keeps order in their classroom and last it keeps the class in a positive environment with less stress. Without some sort of order there will be no learning.

The Day Planner! What a great tool to teach time management and how to keep up with class assignments and test dates. How can you ever live without some sort of day planner. I have always, since a very young age, keep a calender and/or day planner. I even still have some of them and it is really neat to look back and see what I accomplished, that day or even that year. Now I use one on my cell phone. (Going Green) This teaches organization and responsibility. This will greatly benefit these students for the rest of their lives.

Mr. McClung does not play when it comes to being late on an assignment. He takes off a letter grade per day. What a motivator to not be late or be a procrastinator. I know I would not want to loose a whole letter grade for being late. Glad Dr. Strange is not as hard on the students in EDM 310.

I checked out several of the links in McClung’s blog but the two that really grabbed my attention were Plagiarism Checker and Twitter Times. How useful are both of these blogs. You can click on the names of these two links and it will take you straight there to check them out.

Mr. McClung is very serious about Internet safety which is a great thing. You can not ever be too safe with children on the internet and it is our job as teachers to protect these children. His rules are very clear and precise.

I read Lesson Three- The Quest for The Perfect T-Shirt. This blog hit home with me. His class as drawn pictures to go on a t-shirt for a fundraiser for the Susan G Komen for the Cure. My family has done this same thing for my nephew who we lost this past December to AML Leukemia. My nephew Jarrod, had some friends who drew up some designs to go on the back of a t-shirt for a fundraiser for him. They helped to raise a lot of money for him and his family. So I can’t wait to see what design Mr. McClung’s class chooses from their classmates drawings and see how much money they raise.

I really like the layout at the top of the blog. I like how you can click on the different parts like “Welcome” and “Mr. McClung” and it takes you right to what you want to know. I would love to learn how to use Blogger more effectively and add more things. I hope after EDM 310 is over I will have time to sit down and set my page up with more information and different things.

Mr. McClungs blog is very useful to parents, staff and students. There is no excuse for not knowing what is going on in the classroom or what the students need. He is very organized and all the class information is there. He has ways to get in contact with him too. In fact while I was on his site, I noticed a button in the top right hand side of the page that said “chat with Joe McClung”, so when that button is green, he is available to chat right there online. He has it all covered, from what is going on in the classroom, his expectations of the students and how to get in touch with him if need be.

This blog is very different from the other student blogs I have read. This is more of a classroom blog. It is a very informative classroom blog. It is also a very community active classroom blog. This is a very busy class and you can tell that the students are being taught in a non-traditional way (which is good) and that they are applying their creativity and brains in this classroom. I believe I could use this blog as an example to one day set up my own classroom blog whether I am teaching first grade or sixth grade. This blog is very organized and informative for not only the students but staff and parents as well.