Mystery Skype Call

We have been practicing and preparing for our first Mystery Skype call! Finally the day is here and we will have our call this afternoon. We think we are all set.

We will use Skype to connect with a class somewhere else in the world. We will have to ask them yes or no questions to figure out where they are. This ties perfectly in with our recent explorations of Manitoba and Canada. We have been receiving postcards from people we know around Canada giving us information about their communities. The community we will connect with today is one of them!

We will use paper maps that are laminated so we can write on them as we narrow down our guess. We will also have a Google map up on our projector that we can move and zoom in on as we narrow it down. We have practiced starting with general questions and then getting more specific as we hone in on a region. The questions have to be yes or no questions. Some questions we might ask are:
"Are you in the north or south part of Canada?"
"Are you in the east or west part of Canada?"
"Are you in the province/territory ...?"
"Are you in the north or south part of the province?"
"Are you in the east or west part of  the province?"
"Are you close to water?"
"Is your home urban?"

We are super excited to connect with another class this way!

Update:
The call was a huge success! We asked really smart questions and narrowed it down quickly, just like we practiced. Some kids sat at the paper maps, some took photos, some asked questions, some wrote down the answers and some focused on the Google map. Everyone was totally engaged. We will totally do this again!

Seeing and hearing the students run the call, ask smart questions and be involved in their own way was so exciting for me. I love it when all the little parts of an inquiry or project come together and the kids have a really neat way to show me what they know. They applied what they have worked through this year in so many ways. Huge win!

#postcardproject

This year in Social Studies we have been learning about our community and comparing our community with other cities. Now we are ready to learn about lots of other communities in Canada during our current unit - The Canadian Community. We are looking for LOTS of information and we hope you can help.

We would like Canadians from other parts of Canada to send us a postcard from their community. On the postcard we would like them to tell us information about their part of Canada. We have brainstormed a list of questions we are interested in asking other Canadians. If you are interested in sharing with us, leave us a comment below. We can communicate by email, snail mail, Google Hangout or Skype.
We posted about the project on Instagram and have some more folks that are going to connect with us too! You can find us @terrifictwos.
As the postcards start coming in we will post the locations and the facts we learn to our Google Map. Each pin on the map will show a location where we know someone and when you click on it, the information they sent us will pop up. We will also post them in our classroom on our wall map of Canada.
We will keep sharing here on the progress of the project so stay tuned!

The letter we sent to our fellow Canadians

The questions we generated to ask them! We each highlighted the ones that are important to us and asked our person those questions.

Skyping with Mrs.Malkoske's class :)

Today we tried out Skype for the first time as a class. We had a call with Mrs. Malkoske's grade 1 and 2 class down the road at Dr. Hamilton School. We are going to Skype regularly as reading buddies for Read to Someone during our Daily 5 time. After we all had our chance to see what Skype is all about, Rachel and Ricky had a chance to read to two students in their class. I love using Skype in this way whether it is with same-age students or Little Buddies like this. The students are totally engaged in it and able to model being good readers for the youngsters.
-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Today I was the first person to skype with Mrs.Malkoske's class. I skyped with Jayden, I read her If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and she read Dolphins. I think both books were awesome!It was pretty fun being the first one to skype with someone. This was my first time. I hope I will get to skype with her again.

BY:Rachel :P

Bird's Hill School Me to We Club

Today a group of kids from our Me to We Club were invited to attend the Media Literacy Week kickoff event at the Manitoba Museum. The theme of Media Literacy Week this year is Digital Citizenship and how we can use digital media with children in a positive way, how we can use digital media to make the world a better place and to create change.
You can see more about our Me to We Club and our video presentation from today at our BHSFreetheChildren blog.
Here we are being interviewed by CBC!



-Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Skype + Daily 5 = Awesome!

Last week we used Skype again during Daily 5 for Listen to Reading with our buddies in Morris. It is incredible to me how quickly our 21st Century Learners/Digital Natives pick up these tools and use them independently. Sometimes with our network we have technical difficulties and I have an entire team of "technicians" ready to help or at least "suggest" what I am doing wrong! Ms. Martens and I get the call going and say hello, and usually some stories are shared between the classes. Then, the buddies that are reading to each other take it away, one after the other. It is awesome to me to see our classroom walls turning into windows.
The story that Carl from Ms. Martens class shared with us was very interesting!

May 18 - I went fishing in the ditch with my dad. There are fish in the ditch because of the flood. I caught three fish. One of them was huge. - Carl

I suggested that Carl should go with his dad to each of the ditches to save all the stranded fish! He didn't think that was such a great idea. We are happy for our Morris friends that they didn't have to leave their homes and that the flood water has receded for this year.
- Mrs. Dent Scarcello :)

Keanna was one of our readers, here with Sjusen in Morris.

skyp with Mrs Malkoske`s class

yesterday we did skype with mrs malkoske`s class.we ask them about tthere woarms. we ask what do they look like. they shoed  us what they look like. they look  like earth woarms. we ask how big they do they get? what do the woarms look like how menny woarms do you have what is the life cycle of the woarm how long doue it last. they were going to ask us about our caterpillers but we ran out fo time. but we shoed them our cryclis  cage

By Anna