Classroom Tour for Students

Do you have a web page for your classroom provided by your school district?  If so, take advantage of blog, photo, or announcement options that can help you communicate with not only your students' families, but your students themselves.

New kindergartners have registered at my school, and I've been sneaking in each day to arrange furniture, prepare bulletin board displays, clean tubs of manipulatives, and get that new-school-year magic mojo going.  Several shy students have come down to sneak a peek into their new classroom, but for those Super Stars who won't be able to visit until next week, I've prepared a photo-tour so they too, can get a glimpse of the fun things that await them!

Our school mascot, Buffalo Brad, offered to help:



I uploaded my photos to Photobucket so I could edit them and add "thought bubbles" so we'd know what Brad is "thinking."  Photobucket also has a slideshow tool where I'm able to select photos and put them in order, saving them with a simple *click* that copies the code that I can then just paste into the blog.

How do you use the web to communicate with families and students?

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In the comments:

gail said...

What a wonderful idea! I hope you don't mind if I borrow it. My classroom is still waiting for the floors to dry before I can put things in their places. Then I will take pictures. Do you have a favorite program for adding speech/thought bubbles?

Hi Gail!  Photobucket has the "thought bubble" as a text box option in its photo editing tools.  Once I've uploaded and saved a photo, I click on it, and scroll my mouse across the top of the photo.  A pop-up editing toolbar appears:  file, edit, resize, rotate, share, etc.  I click on "edit" and a new picture viewer opens up with photo editing tabs across the top of the picture:  Basic, Effects, Retro, Decorate, Animations, Beautify, Distort, etc.  Text or thought bubbles can be added by clicking the "Decorate" tab.  Stickers, Text, Glitter Text, Draw, Erase, Fill, Grab Color, Speech, Thought and several other options appear at the top of the photo.  Choose "Thought" and click on your photo in the area you'd like the bubble to appear.  You'll be able to select from some fun fonts, font sizes, select the color of your text, and can even make the background transparent if you'd like more of a "watermarked" effect (for Text, not Thought) on your photo.  Drag the text box to make it taller/shorter, narrower/wider to best fit in the photo.


You have to save the changes you've made to the photo, but I always "save a copy" (button below photo) so that I always have the original picture to work with at some later time, free of text or other edits.


Hope this helps!