Folks,

Welcome to our new classroom blog.

The concept is fairly simple!

If you have ideas, opinions or stories you would like to share and discuss with the class you are invited to do so here.

Why share here?

Perhaps some of your thoughts are too complex to explain or properly address in class. Maybe you aren't completely comfortable sharing an undeveloped thought in class and prefer to work through it yourself before posting here. It is possible you were surfing the net on a weekend and came across an article you thought we may all like to talk about so you came here instead of posting it straight to Facebook. Whatever the reason, the intent is to provide a safe space for discussing and developing our ideas and practicing our target skills.

What should a post look like?

Ideally, each post will have three elements: 1) a reference to a relevant source (i.e. a book title or a web link); 2) an overview of the topic or the article that sparked your interest; and 3) your thoughts on the topic.

You are free to mix it up and take a different approach, as long as you focus on our target skills.

Is this a required activity?

This blog is meant to provide yet another opportunity to practice our thinking and communication skills. When we sit down down at conference time I would expect someone looking to defend a "Beyond Grade Level" to have posted at least twice and commented on other posts at least 5 times.