Our 12th Mystery Skype took us to Simi Valley, California. This was the first Mystery Skype for the other class. We always enjoy teaching others how to play the game!
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Our 11th Mystery Skype took us to Lebanon, Indiana. They have the same specials rotations as we do! I can't believe we have already connected with 10 classrooms! Our 10th Mystery Skype took us to Fort Yukon, Alaska! They are the smallest school we have connected with. They only have 100 students K-12. They get to witness the Northern Lights quite often! How cool!! Our 9th Mystery Skype of the year took us to Gretna, Nebraska! They are really close to Omaha, Nebraska which has one of the coolest zoos in the world! Our 8th Mystery Skype took us to Jonesboro, Arkansas! We had special visitors from Pittsburg, Kansas school witness this Mystery Skype! Our 7th Mystery Skype took us to Albertville, Alabama! We learned they are the Fire Hydrant Capital of the World! We also danced the Whip and Nae Nae with our new friends!! It was just too beautiful on Friday in Frontenac to spend the afternoon inside, so we moved our math class to the playground! My students are so excited for Genius Hour this school year! Before starting Genius Hour projects, students put together a plan about what they want to explore, how they are going to explore their topic, what resources they will need for the project, and how they will share their project to the world. After putting the plan together, students introduce their projects on Shark Tank Day. Students are introduced one at a time. Students walk to the "stage" with the Shark Tank Theme music playing. They present their plan to the "Shark", which is me. I ask numerous questions about the project, just like the Sharks do on Shark Tank. All of these projects sounds awesome and I can't wait to share the presentations with everyone once they are complete! This is one of my favorite projects that the students do. We begin the year by learning about and writing several different types of poetry. After writing the poetry, students type the poems onto Keynote and take screenshots of the final pieces. The photos are then put into iMovie, where students create a short film featuring their work. Next, students color a picture of a classic painting from a famous artist. This picture will become our augmented reality trigger. Using the app Aurasma, students embed their movie onto the picture. When the picture is scanned using the Aurasma app, the movie pops out and students enjoy each other's poetry. Mrs. McGowen's class did their second Mystery Skype of the school year. The students connected with a classroom in Tampa, Florida. We learned that they would not be having school on Thursday, September 1st because of Tropical Storm Hermine. We will keep our new friends in our thoughts! Today's Mystery Skype took us to the Southeast Region. We connected with a classroom from Carrollton, Georgia! We learned that Georgia is where Chik-Fil-A originated! For this Mystery Skype, we visited our neighbors to the just to the north of us. We connected with students from Bellevue, Nebraska. We learned that they have some awesome lunches including Tator Tot Nachos and French Toast Sticks! This was Mrs. McGowen's class first Mystery Skype of the school year! They took a trip to the West Coast and connected with a class from Walnut Creek, California. How much fun! Our second Mystery Skype of the school year took us to Forest City, Iowa! These fifth grade students shared some really neat facts about Iowa with us! We had our very first Mystery Skype of the school year! We connected with Ms. Momin's class in San Antonio, Texas! We are trying to connect with all 50 states this year. Check out all of the pictures from the session! Check out the boxes the students created for Valentine's Day! How creative!! Instead of treats this Valentine's Day, I brought in a barbershop quartet to serenade the students! Check it out by clicking the link! BARBERSHOP QUARTET Halloween is one of my favorite holidays to spend with the students! The candy! The costumes! The parade! The amazing community support! Check out our costumes! Penguin Books USA made a visit to our class via Skype. Penguin Books is located in New York City! The students learned about several new and exciting stories from Penguin Books. Here is the list they shared: Hamster Prince Toy Makers Apprentice Roller Girl Confessions of an Imaginary Friend Three Times Lucky Atlantia It's Your World James and The Giant Peach Under The Egg What a great way to get students excited about reading! For the past two weeks we have been reading Fish in A Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt as a part of the Global Read Aloud Project. Over 500,000 students around the world are participating in the project. We have had the opportunity to connect with two classrooms in the United States, Mrs. Bubert's class in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Mrs. Antonius's class in Brunswick, Ohio. We discussed our favorite characters, moments in the book so far, and thoughts on the theme of the story. The students also shared about Frontenac and Frank Layden Elementary. In the upcoming weeks, the students will be doing some shared journaling with the students in Ohio. On October 28th, the author of Fish in a Tree, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, will be Skyping with the 3rd-5th grade students at Frank Layden Elementary! Her program, "Be Someone's Hero", will be an amazing experience for all of the students! One fun activity to get students up and moving is an activity called "Selfie Social Studies!" I typically use this for a chapter or unit review in Social Studies. For this activity, students work in pairs. The first thing I do is take the review questions and turn them into QR codes. I use classtools.net to create these. I print these and place them on one side of the hallway in our school. On the other side of the hallway, I place pictures of possible answers to the questions. I take up then entire length of the hallway to make sure the students have plenty of space and get plenty of movement. When a student finds the answer to a question, they have their partner take a photo them holding up the question number on their fingers by the picture. Students them submit the pictures to me using Showbie. The students love the activity. It gets them up and moving, plus it is fun! Today we celebrated International Dot Day. After reading the book by Peter Reynolds, the students created their own dot artwork with inspiring messages. The students then went around the school and "made their mark!" To learn more about Dot Day, click here! After spreading joy around the school, students came back and created some dot art using Drawing Desk on their iPads. This past week in Science, the students have been exploring and researching trying to answer the following question: What makes bridges so strong? Students learned about bridge design and with their knowledge of forces, they engineered bridges made of paper. Today, we tested the each strength of each bridge by adding pennies until the bridge collapsed. It was a fun and very educational activity! Today, we connected with students from Lyford, Texas. We love to Mystery Skype! This summer, we were blessed to get a Donors Choose grant to purchase yoga mats for the classroom. The students have been using them to sit or lay on while they work around the classroom. However, these mats are not just for working on. They are also for yoga! This week, the students did their first Cosmic Kids Yoga session. It was a Star Wars themed episode that was really fun! Movement in the classroom helps kids achieve more by keeping them engaged and motivated throughout the day. |
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October 2016
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