How I Want to Use My Blog

Welcome to my blog! My name is Chris Terzis and I am a Math and Science Teacher on the 6th Grade Blue Team. I intend to use my blog for:

1. Communication with Students: In today's classrooms, I see more and more students bring their own devices to school. These students are used to being connected to Internet at all times. I want to take advantage of this and establish another way to communicate with my students. I believe, as an educator, the more connections we can make with our students, we establish a trust between each other. This is essential to push students to their potential. I will be posting homework assignments, project descriptions, rubrics, notes, and videos to help support what they are doing in the classroom. Are you not fully understanding what we discussed in class? Were you absent? Did you forget something at school that you need to complete an assignment? Stop by my blog and you should be able to find all of this information here.

2. Establish Another Connection With Parents: I am constantly searching for ways to connect with my students' parents/guardians. Most of my students have working parents and they are not always available on a school schedule. By keeping my blog up-to-date, it can provide parents with a way to stay on top of what is going in their child's education. They can access everything that we are working on and know the due dates of assignments. This also allows a parent to keep informed with a student that is reluctant to share  or that does not bring home any type of communication (not that this would be any of my students). Parents can subscribe to my RSS feed so that they can be alerted when the blog is updated and stay current with what we are doing.

3. A Place to Showcase Student Work: With the flexibility of a blog, it can easily become a portfolio of student work. With it's ability to display a variety of digital formats, just about any project I do with students can be displayed on a blog. I believe that when students know that they have an audience, they produce their best work. If students know that their work is going to be displayed on the blog (even if not directly identified), they put extra effort into what they are creating because they want to show what they are capable of. It would also provide for peer feedback as students could post responses to what other students have created. Students learn so many different communication skills by practicing giving feedback to others and they learn to think critically.