This is a blog to provide 6th grade students the opportunity to work together using 21st Century Technology to gain a greater understanding of Ancient Civilizations and a greater understanding of Life. It is my vision that Water for Sixth Grade would become the most interactive, valuable website in the lives of my students. The best way to describe my blog is in one word: Variety. It is my goal to keep things fresh, new and interesting. In using this blog to teach my students about ancient civilization, I truely use a vareity of methods when I blog. I post powerpoints for students to review, I post videos to help them learn and understand, I post chapters of the childrens book I am writing about a character that travels throughout the ancient civilizations we study. I post articles to help them take notes, I post study guides to help them review for tests. A large majority of the students time is also spent on blog assignments. I put together a wide variety of assignments. At times, students will browse websites I have posted and tell me something they learned. This type of assignment is meant as an introductory measure for the unit. Students post comments about pictures, videos. I have student created study guides on the blog. The students come up with questions, then they answer each other’s questions in the form of comments. I have them post pretend conversations with people, in which they converse about a certain topic. We have informational posts, trying to inform the world. We have debates: I pose a question, and we blog about our thoughts and opinions and sense it is a blog, we can obviously respond to each other, respectfully. Again, the key in my opinion is to have a variety of good stuff. On the sidebar, I try to include things that just enhance the overall atmosphere of the blog. I have weather, a list of my favorite books, a voki, links, pictures, polls, label cloud for easy navigation, hit counter map-to show all of our visitors. One of the most popular features of my blog is the podcast. This is included in the sidebar as well. The podcast, once again, has a variety. I tell riddles, jokes, have guests sing songs for me, talk about various topics, favorite songs, stories, etc. No matter what I may do on the blog, my only goal is to make it the best tool possible to help my students learn. I want it to be more than just a website, more than just a blog, I want it to be the most dynamic teaching tool that education has ever witnessed. As as the name suggests, water is the most essential element for life, my blog, Water for Sixth Grade, is the most essential element for their social studies life.

I am a sixth grade teacher at Brandon Valley Middle School in Brandon, SD. Blogging is not my job, persay, but it is a large part of my teaching style.

I began blogging about Ancient Civilization because I realized how powerful of a tool a blog could be in education. I am a self-taught blogger and have discovered many tips and tricks along the way. I began blogging about ancient civilizaton because having a blog for my students greatly improves their learning and understanding of what I am trying to teach them.

I have been working on my current blog for 2 years. I began blogging four years ago, but when I started out, it was not too effective, so I deleted it and started over with my current blog. It took a lot of time and learning to create the type of blog I have now, a blog that is truely a difference maker in my classroom.

During the week, my blog typically gets between 150 and 200 hits per day. The most I have ever gotten in one day is around the 260 mark. Thanks to cluster maps, I know that from July 2008 up until now, I have over 62,000 hits. My blog has hits from over 120 countries around the world.

My blog does not have an income. I have decided to use it for teaching only, not as a method of making money.

The type of person that would be interested in Water for Sixth Grade is a person that is interested in ancient civilization. Also, any sixth grade student around the United States would be interested in this blog because it could help them learn about ancient civilization as well. To be honest, the average person would be interested in this blog as well because of the variety and interesting content.

Some days I do not work on the blog, some days I spend a lot of time, to give an idea of the time committment, I will describe my time spent per week. On average, I spend 8 to 10 hours blogging per week. Some of that time is spent preparing items to post on my blog.

I think you should subscribe to my blog because it is a blog that offers a variety of elements. I think you should subscribe to my blog because it has good stuff on it, plain and simple. I think it is a blog that could offer good ideas to other people in education as far as how to use a blog to enhance your classroom.

The best advice I can give other bloggers trying to succeed is to have good stuff. Don’t be boring, don’t have uninteresting things. Make sure your blog has a purpose and a value. Add things that may not be extremely important, but will enhance the overall professional feel of the blog.

This blog can be visited at http://waterforsixthgrade.blogspot.com