Blogs on Upper Elementary (3-5)

When I started playing blues songs for my first grade students, I never imagined I was introducing a fantastic launching point for thematic, standards-based teaching. We soon formed The Kids Like Blues Band, and since last March we've used blues songs as a springboard for teaching academic content standards in reading, writing, listening, speech, social studies, technology, and the visual and performing arts. So far we've played at a street fair, for staff and students at the Cal State San Marcos College of Education, and even live on local TV news and KPBS TV. We're a real band, and the students are fully engaged, learning and rocking!

The election year is a great time for social studies education; presidential and congressional campaigns are such a large part of the news and daily conversations that they have sparked the curiosity of even the youngest students. A student response system combined with an interactive whiteboard can bring lessons to life by giving students a hands-on "voter" experience.

Back in May, our team at Knapp Elementary was busy planning our annual summer reading program. Some of us had just participated in a parent-teacher chat via Twitter on maximizing opportunities to keep the learning going over the summer. We talked about ways to keep students engaged between when the school doors were closed and when they reopened in September.

A blog without an audience is like...a library without books, a car without an engine, Beyonce without a ring. Those were some of the responses David Mitchell (@DeputyMitchell) got when he asked his Twitter followers to fill in the blank.