Proud of my #Selfie

I have always acknowledged that my better ideas are inspired by other's work, thoughts, throw away remarks and/or challenges and I always try to accredited my sources. The only reason I started teaching through mantle of the expert was because my HT at that point mentioned it in a staff meeting (not what it was, he just asked if I'd heard of it). Off I went to research it, because I was intrigued and because I hate not knowing something! My first class blog post in 2007 was written for the very same reason - my head had said 'I wonder if it would be a good way of commincating ...' 

So this week I was inspired by tweets between Claire Lotriet (@ohlottie - a fellow GTAUK friend, year 6 teacher extraordinaire and computing expert) and Amy Harvey (@Ms_Jamdangory - fellow Talent Pool/ teachmeet supporter/bonkers Norfolk friend). Claire's post, #proudofmyselfie, shoes how her students take photos of themselves and the achievements they are proud of, then share them via social media. 

I loved this idea and immediately thought of a child in my class who finds it difficult to accept praise and will rarely think that they have achieved or done something they should feel proud of. At some point we will get a school twitter account, but as always I wanted to do something immediately with my year 2s. Only last week I had been talking to a colleague about giving each child their own display space so that they could choose what they put up. I have limited wall space though and talked myself out of it as I wouldn't be able to give each child an A3 sized piece. Our class blog is our extended display space, so I decided that I should give a bit of control back to the children about when their work gets posted. On Monday night I created some 'stickets' - tickets that children can stick on the work they are proud of.

 I created the blog on Tuesday and told the children about it at the end of Wednesday morning. In the afternoon we were working on some backgrounds for our art and I grabbed a couple of children to go through some misconceptions from the morning. One child's lightbulbs went on and she said, 'I'm proud of my selfie!' Bingo! She stuck in her sticket and I took her photo. 

I've often championed the blogger app and this shows how brilliant it is, as 30 seconds later it was online. I will teach my children to blog themselves, or my mini digital leaders will do it, but as a model I have done the first ones myself. Today has been the best feeling though as 11 children collected their own stickets because they were proud of their BIG writing achievements. I haven't read their writing yet, but the fact that they are proud of it is perfect. I have already achieved what I set out to achieve too as the aforementioned child collected a sticket. How wonderful when they go home and show their families. 

If you want to see for yourself, click on the Proud of my #Selfie tab on our class blog. 

Thank you Claire for the inspiration!