Author: Pernille Schmidt Ripp

Since 2010, I have lived my teaching life outloud, writing, speaking, and sharing the great, the okay, and the sometimes not so great. Starting as a 4th grade teacher in Middleton, Wisconsin, then heading to the middle school for many years, in 2022 I moved back home to Denmark to try teaching primary grades. Because why not? But I also started the Global Read Aloud in 2010, a global literacy project that has connected millions of children across the world. I also write books trying to help others co-create sustainable student-centered learning spaces, and I share my life on Instagram, in both English and Danish.
blogging, challenge, kidblog, writing

Student Blogging Challenges – A List of Ideas

Pernille Schmidt Ripp
One of the things that my students love the most on our KidBlog are our weekly blog challenges.  And while these challenges are in sense homework, they always have the opportunity to do them at school, and get enough time to do it without being a hassle.  Over the past two years we have had quite a lot of fun with these, so why not share for all you blogging with your students.  Feel free to borrow or change to suit your kids.

I have broken these into categories for easier reading.

All About You

  • Imagine you have been given $100 to donate to someone or something like a charity or even to start a charitable business.   The challenge is to make your money grow whether through product or some other form.  So you need to blog about what you will do with the money, how it will grow and how much you can make it grow even more.  Your money will have 3 months to grow.
  • If you could go anywhere in time once round-trip, where would you go and why?  What would you see there?  What would you do?  Would you bring anything back or try to change the past?
  • If you could go anywhere in time once round-trip, where would you go and why?  What would you see there?  What would you do?  Would you bring anything back or try to change the past? 
  • If you could eat only one meal the next year, what would it be? 
  • If you could do one good thing this Holiday season to make others happy, what would it be?
  •  Tell me about the great traditions you have in your family. 
  •  What makes you the happiest in your life and even better how do you show how thankful you are? 
  • This week I would like to challenge you to write about about a place, from the past or the present, where you would like to live or go for a holiday or vacation.

Wacky Challenges

All About School

  • Which school rule you would change, how you would change it and why?
  • How is the year going so far?  What are you excited about?  What works for you?  What doesn’t? How can we make 5th grade better?  What should I change?
  • What would you change about school so that you would love being there?
  • Tell me what was the best, the worst, the most fun, the most boring things of the trimester?  
  • So, if you could decide what we had to learn about, what would it be?  What would our goals be? How would we learn about it? And how would we pass that learning on? 
  • What does a principal do all day?  What qualities does a principal have and what do they do in the summer?
  • You are the teacher; which class would you add to school curriculum that we don’t already have?  When would the class meet, what would the students do?  What would it look like, feel like, sound like?  And what would the students produce to show their learning?

 
Your Thoughts on Education and School

  • What is the true purpose of education?  Why do you go to school?  Why do you learn what you have to learn?
  • Is teaching and learning the same thing or not?
  • Should education be fun?
  • Give me your thoughts on tests!  Do you think they help or hurt your learning?  What do you suggest to teachers about tests?

Academic Related and Story Writing

  • You need to write to other teachers and tell them about the Global Read Aloud.
  • I want you to tell the world about Innovation Day!
  • Tell everyone about the simulation in social studies 
  • Keep a science diary of our experiments and answer any questions people may leave in the comments.
  • Write a book review of the book you are currently reading.
  • Explain what the author study is, who you chose to study and why.
  • Finish the story, “The crash came from around the corner…”
  • Finish the sentences:  Being a good teacher means…. Being a good student means… 
  • What do you love when teachers do in their classrooms?  What do you wish I did as a teacher? If you were a teacher how would you run your classroom?

Challenges from Students:

  • If you were to go inside of a book, what book would you go inside of, and what would you do?
  • Create a blogging challenge for other students to do.
  • If you could create your own country, what would it be called, where would it be, and what language would the residents speak?

All About Blogging

  • Should we continue to blog or not, convince me!
  • So how has blogging helped you as a writer?  What do you like about blogging?  What do you not like?  What would you change?  Would you continue blogging next year if you could?
  • What are the rules for blogging, how do you stay safe?
  •  Now that you have tried it, what would you tell other kids and teachers about blogging?  What should they know before they start?  What should they be careful with?  How can they get people to comment?  Any advice for people who want to blog but don’t know how?
  • Pick one student from another blog and introduce yourself properly 
being a teacher, hopes

Please Don’t Become A Teacher…

Pernille Schmidt Ripp
If you believe that those who can’t; teach.

Please don’t become a teacher if you think you just get to play with kids all day, leave when they leave, and just have them work from a textbook.

Don’t become a teacher because you think it will shelter you from the demands of a high paying job, or give you those summers off to pursue your real interests.

Please don’t become a teacher if it seems like an easy job where all you have to do is fill students’ minds and then test them on it afterwards.

But do become a teacher if you believe in all children, not just those with fortunate lives.

Become a teacher if you want to be part of someone’s life, good or bad.  If you see the world through challenges and things to explore.

Please do become a teacher if you have unwavering faith, love, and patience.   If you are not afraid of change, have convictions, and honestly believe that ALL children can succeed.

Then become a teacher; if your heart is in it, because it must be in it to endure all of the outside demands that we face.  Please do become a teacher if you want to grow and have a job that changes you as a person while you help change others.  Become a teacher if you have much to give, much to love, and much to believe.  But if you don’t, please don’t become a teacher.

Inspired by this sad secret on postsecret

assumptions, being a teacher, lessons learned, Student-centered

Even With Our Changed Classrooms, Have We Changed Anything At All?

Pernille Schmidt Ripp
Image from icanread

It relates to school because there are calculators…

It relates to school because he uses math in counting out the tickets …

It has to do with math and that is why it has to do with school…

My students are journaling about the movie “Caine’s Arcade” and how it relates to school.  These wonderfully creative, powerfully imaginative students don’t see the deep connections between the environment that I try to create and that of Caine.  They don’t see how I try to challenge them to problemsolve, to create, to use materials in different ways.  to try, to fail and to have hope and perseverance.

Instead they see a 9-year-old boy who realized life was more than calculators and math.  That you could build something with what you have and have a little bit of hope.  They see that boy as an inspiration, his arcade as incredible, but not those things in the environment we create here, at school. 

What a lesson for me to be taught; school is still seen as its own world with set rules.  Segmented and regimented.  As something departmentalized from creativity, or at least where creativity is built into the day, scripted and called for.  School is viewed as something to be lived through so the real experimenting can happen afterwards.  I may think I do things differently, but I may be the only one.

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discussion, no homework

We Don’t Need Any More" How To Cope With Homework Lists" – What We Need Is a Debate!

Pernille Schmidt Ripp
Summer is coming and with that an onslaught of parenting magazines on how we can help our children cope with homework.  Cope – what an interesting word when combined with homework.  I know when I assigned homework regularly I thought I was adding to my students’ educational experience.  I thought I was deepening their thinking, to perhaps help them, teach them, deepen their knowledge.  Instead, it appears, I was merely helping them develop coping with a necessary evil. I was setting them up for whatever adult job that requires homework, I am still looking for this one,.

So, parenting magazine, how about an article on why homework should be revisited, why the whole merit of homework is diminishing and why homework really doesn’t need to be assigned.  How about giving parents a resource to start the conversation, the discussion that should be happening at all schools, particularly primary ones, about why homework can be outlawed.  How we can still teach students time management, perseverance, and study skills without homework?  Who will publish that article?

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    achievement, being a teacher, students, testing

    So This Is How A Teacher Breakdown Starts

    Pernille Schmidt Ripp
    My students are doing their spring assessments as we prepare to wrap up the year and send them on their way.  An innocent computer check-in that takes less than an hour, nothing to be worried abot really.  The kids know it is not a big deal, to do their best, that this is only a snapshot of their skills on that particular day, at that particular time.

    And yet….the dread is rising in me.  How will they do?  How will they feel about the test?  Will the test know that they are excited about the talent show results?  That they are hungry?  That they have had a high intensity day and their brains may be just a little zonked?  Of course it won’t, and why should it, the test doesn’t care one iota about my students.  

    But I do and that is my problem.  With every point they gain or lose, my anxiety soars.  How will it affect me as a teacher if a child lost 4 points, whatever that means.  What did I do wrong since they didn’t make momentous gains on this test while in class they have blown me away with their increased participation, their inferences, and their overall depth of knowledge?  Why can’t the test understand that all of these kids have grown, whether they wanted to or not?  Why can’t the test prove that?

    So I take a deep breath and let the results stand.  The tests are done, the points have been given and I am trying to piece together what I need to change.  What I need to salvage, what I need to challenge myself in.  And I breathe a little more, realizing that much like I told my students, I also need to believe that this is just a snapshot.  This is just a moment in their life, this moment in time where they are performing at this set level.  That this does not determine their future success, their future growth, or even their future.  Perhaps it will determine mine, but that I need to worry about another day.

    assumptions, students, technology

    Some Say They Are Too Young, I Say, "Trust Them…"

    Pernille Schmidt Ripp
    My kids being kids

    Even though my fifth graders may beg to differ, they are just kids. Wonderful, young, impressionable things, eager to change the world, kids that have lived a little and still have much to learn. They are young, indeed, but passionate, open, and never ever afraid of a challenge. And yet most just see their age, their made by date, and definitely their grade level.  So should I be surprised when critics claim they are too young for more advanced technology? That serious use of technology shouldn’t really start until middle school, that fifth grade is just too early?

    I suppose I could be upset at statements that try to limit what my students are capable of.  I suppose I should fire back with witty sarcasm or scathing words. I suppose I should bring that anger home and fume over peoples’ assumptions. But I don’t, at least not anymore. Instead I plot and plan, I reach out to those who have great ideas and I get really really stubborn. We shall show them after all.

    So when some think Prezi is too hard for ten year olds we prove it is not. Or when people are not sure that my students should blog because what could they possibly have to share, we become role models for others. Flip video cameras may have been killed off but in our classroom the students grab them whenever they get a chance to document their learning. PowerPoint becomes an entry point into creation with other possibilities beckoning us further.

    They may be young my students, but they are not afraid. So tell us we cannot do something, or even better, tell us that we are really too young to figure it out, and I will show you 22 students that disagree. I will show you 22 students that cannot wait to prove you wrong, after all, you wouldn’t be the first.

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