Blogs Give Parents Window To The Classroom

FALMOUTH- The typical response from children when asked by their parents, “What did you do in school today?” is usually some variation of “nothing.”
To combat that falsehood, a group of kindergarten teachers in Falmouth Public Schools have taken to the Internet to prove that there is much more than “nothing” going on in the classrooms. On the contrary, since September these first-year students have learned about a wide array of topics, ranging from public safety, with a visit from Falmouth Police Officer Benjamin C. Guthrie to the East Falmouth School, to the art of Andy Warhol, thanks to a presentation by the volunteer-based organization Arts Alive at the Mullen-Hall School.

Kaylee McHugh and Erin Furey record their voices using Audacity, a free audio recording program for computers.

That information, and more, is available in an online journal the teachers have dubbed “Kinderblogs,” a variation of blogs that are used to publish digital content, such as artwork, text, audio, video, pictures, and links to other websites.
The educational value of the blogs, said Mullen-Hall School kindergarten teacher Sara Mae Varvaro, is tied specifically to the accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children for the district’s full-day kindergarten program. Since last January the district has been preparing for that process, with the blogs arising out of the need to better communicate with parents about what their children are doing in class.
Ms. Varvaro was one of the first to utilize the blogs, beginning in the middle of last year with her first post in January writing, that “the hopes, dreams, aspirations for this site are to offer families a place to come and make connections with kindergarten. You can take the information from this page and generate discussions with your children that are authentic and meaningfully connected to their learning.”
The next month she posted four online entries, and since then she has posted more than 10 blogs per month. The highlight of last year, she said, was when she recorded students reading their final projects, stories they had written during the school year, and then transferred those into MP3, or audio files, for families to listen to online. That instilled a sense of pride in her students, she said, who viewed themselves as real authors because their stories were online for people to hear. It also strengthened the connection between the classroom and the student’s home.
Since then, Ms. Varvaro has become the district’s resident expert, responsible for training her colleagues at the kindergarten level, on ways to best utilize the blog.
While the district has introduced blogging into the classroom in the past, there are many teachers who have not used the resources since last fall, posting only a handful of times before stopping the venture.
At least at the kindergarten level, it appears that this will not be a passing fancy. Ms. Varvaro, who co-teaches a class this year with Elissa L. Grunin, even posted several times during the summer, offering details of her travels to Costa Rica, using it as a way to teach students about the types of monkeys found in that country.
For Taryn J. Dean, a kindergarten teacher at the East Falmouth School for the past nine years, this is the first time she has used this technology to keep parents up to speed on classroom activities. In the past, she has communicated through a monthly newsletter, which she still publishes, that details classroom activities, upcoming events, and information about curriculum.
The ability to do these things online allows that same information to be disbursed quicker, with the addition of pictures, video, and audio, that is not possible with the print edition, she said.

Sara Varvaro, a kindergarten teacher at the Mullen-Hall School, uses a “kinderblog” to update parents on what her students cover in the classroom. CHRISTOPHER KAZARIAN/ENTERPRISE

Overall, she said, “I think it is a really neat way to communicate with families, not only parents and guardians who live with their children, but relatives far away.”
As to the additional work that blogging entails, she said it is barely noticeable. “Once you have a blog set up, it is pretty simple to keep up,” she said.
Beyond the benefits of communication, Ms. Varvaro admitted, it familiarizes students with technology, making them more comfortable with computers and video cameras.
While some may worry about the safety and privacy of students being compromised, Ms. Varvaro said parents are notified at the beginning of the year about the blog and can tell teachers whether they want their child featured on them. Through this process, she had discovered that there are many parents who already have family blogs and find this is merely an extension of that.
Paula S. Fratantoni of Stone Wall Lane, Falmouth is one such mother. Her daughter, Annalisa, 5, is a student in Ms. Varvaro’s class. Her son, Alexander, 7, now in the first grade, had her as a teacher last year.
She finds the Kinderblog has been a wonderful tool to start conversations with her children about their schoolwork. When she refers to a particular lesson, she said, “They will immediately want me to go the computer and look at what songs they sang or what art we made. It is particularly helpful with my son who shares a little less, while my daughter shares a lot.”
Her grandparents, she said, have taken to Ms Varvaro’s blog as well, having commented on one particular entry made recently.
As a parent, Pamela J. Richardson of Elm Arch Way, Falmouth, said the blog is a way to ease the fears that come with her first child, Jack, 6, starting school this year. “I had a hard time with that,” she said. “It is really scary to have your kid go away and be gone for however many hours a day. It is hard to grasp. To have this and allow me to engage him in his work is such a comfort for me.”
She forwarded a picture of Jack carving out a pumpkin to friends and family. When Jack saw the photo online, she said, “he was so excited... he thinks he has his own website.”
She and her son have taken advantage of the many educational links, from math to literacy to science, Ms. Varvaro has posted on her blog.
For her, she views the Kinderblog as only a positive, helping her to maintain a connection to her son’s life even though she may be miles apart. “I go on it every day to see how she has updated it,” she said. “I check it before I go home, which by the time I do, Jack is often exhausted. When I ask him what happened, he often doesn’t remember, but for me to bring up a topic, like I saw you had a fire drill, will trigger something and he will begin to tell me about it. It is a great facilitator.”