Our First Mystery Skype Call

On Friday the students in my 5th period math class got to participate in our first Mystery Skype call this year. Joan Young, a 4th grade teacher and member of my PLN (personal learning network), and I planned our call via Twitter and email. We used this post and this post to help us learn how to do a Mystery Skype call.

About half hour before the Skype call, Joan sent me an IM on Skype reminding me to remove my city and state from my profile. I quickly did so. The Mystery Skype call would not have been much fun if I had placed the Skype call and Mrs. Young's students could see where I was located. This is how my Skype profile looks now. (Click on imagine to enlarge.)


We decided which students would be greeters and questioners, and which students would be researchers and helpers. Then the call was placed and the questioning began.

Mrs. Young's class graciously let us go first. We asked if they were located in the United States. Yes, they answered. Are you located east of the Mississippi River? They answered no, and I was so caught up in the game that I forgot a no meant our turn was over. As we tried to ask another question, Mrs. Young reminded us of the rules. So it was their turn. They asked if our state touched an ocean. We answered no and got a turn again. And so it went back and forth.

Mrs. Young's class asked such great questions, they were quickly able to determine that we were located in Louisiana. It took us a little longer to discover that they are located in California. We tried to extend the activity by trying to figure out the city each other is located in. Again, Mrs. Young's fourth graders beat us and zeroed in on New Orleans rather quickly. My kids kept commenting about how well they played and how smart they were.

Mrs. Young's Class Cheer Their Victory

We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and learned some important geography skills along the way. We can't wait until our next Mystery Skype call.

If you are looking for a class to connect with to do a Mystery Skype call check here or here.

New York, Oreos, and Skype

Today we did our first Skype call with another classroom. Mr. David Craig and I have our students participating in the 2011 O.R.E.O. Project which is hosted by Jen Wagner. As part of the project we decided we wanted to have our students stack Oreo cookies against each other via Skype. It was a great collaboration and the kids had a wonderful time. Thanks Mr. Craig's class.


Click on the image below to see our results listed on the Google form that Jen Wagner is collecting from all the classes that participated. The first number is the number of students who stacked cookies and the second number is the class average.

Here is the map of the classes that participated and reported their results.

Answering Questions about September 11th

I'm sorry I didn't know about this video when we did our lessons on the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Please watch this video with your parents. It is one of the best explanations I've ever seen clearing telling the facts about that day.
Unfortunately the embed code doesn't seem to be working properly, so you can click here to get to the video.

Get More: Nick News Episodes,Nick News,Nick News Games

After you have watched the video please leave a comment stating whether or not you have a better understanding of the 9-11 attacks and events that happened after the attacks.

We Celebrated Constitution Day

Constitution Day is celebrated on September 17 every year and since it falls on a Saturday this year, we celebrated a day early. Ms. Naugle invited her good friend, Mr. James Adams, to come speak to her social studies class about this very important document.




Prior to Mr. Adams' visit the students had learned the School House Rock song for the Preamble to the Constitution. The students had also completed lessons using BrainPOP and Discovery videos to help them develop an understanding of the Constitution. They also completed KWL charts which helped Mr. Adams prepare for his visit. Ms. Naugle gave him the questions that her students had written on their KWL charts so that he had an idea of what they still wanted to know about the Constitution.

When Mr. Adams arrived the students sang him the Preamble song. He had never heard it before and he loved the performance. He started with a general overview of the Constitution and then answered all of the students questions. As he spoke the students filled in the L (what I learned) part of their KWL chart. To wrap up the visit the students wanted to sing the song one more time so we did.

Thank you Mr. Adams for helping us celebrate Constitution Day.

The First Week of School

Wow, what a great first week we had. Besides doing our math and social studies lessons, I did a lot of tech with my students. They learned how to blog on paper first. Then we watched a video made by Linda Yollis' 3rd graders in California on how to leave quality comments. They then added Post-It note comments to each others' paper blogs. Finally they were introduced to their very own blog on kidblog.org. Four of my 2/3rd period students even got to thepublish step. They have already been getting comments from my connections on Twitter because I tweeted about them using the hashtag #comments4kids.

We also learned how to use the learning management system, Edmodo, in two of my classes (the other class will start on Monday). Edmodo is a Facebook like site where the students are under a teacher protected dashboard. On Edmodo I can post assignments. embed videos, put up polls. and just pose questions for the students to respond to. They learn digital citizenship and how to behave and respond to each other properly in an online space (and I see everything). They love using Edmodo.

Finally they learned how to access BrainPop videos, take the graded quiz after watching the video and email me the results. Phew, it was definitely a busy week.

Bring on the 2011-2012 School Year

Tomorrow I start my 36th year of teaching and I'm so excited I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep. I want to be in bed by 9 o'clock so that I am ready for a fantastic first day.

I went to school on Saturday for about four hours to put the finishing touches on my classroom. It's funny that it took so long to prepare this year, but I reorganized a lot of my resources so that I am better prepared this year. Last year I started in one classroom and then had to move to the classroom next door after my new Promethean board finally got installed. I never felt totally settled in last year because some of my stuff never got moved out of my old classroom until this summer. Mainly it was my two file cabinets and my classroom library that didn't get moved until a few weeks ago.

Since I have been a math and social studies teacher for the last few years instead of a language arts teacher, I wasn't sure what to do with my huge collection of library books. Well, this year I am letting our newest 4th grade teacher, Amy Vega, take over many of my library books for her room. Since she needed a file cabinet, I only moved one into my classroom. I threw out or gave away lots of resources that I am not using anymore. It felt good to clean out those old files and get reorganized.

I am looking forward to meeting the 27 new students who will be in my homeroom this year tomorrow morning. We will not be changing classes on the first day, so I will be introducing them to our set of netbooks and getting them started on a blogging project. Hopefully by the end of the week they will have completed their first blog posts ever. Here is my lesson plan I hope they have fun with it.

It's Coming Soon

Yes, back to school, is approaching quickly. I am excited to begin the new year because I have lots of fun projects scheduled for all of you. Are you ready?

My buddy, Jan Wells, tweeted about Chogger while she was attending Podstock in Witchita, Kansas. I decided to spend a couple of minutes playing with this comic creator. You select what kind of comic panel you want to use. Images can be imported directly from Google images, drawn, taken with your webcam, or uploaded from your files. I created the above comic in less than 4 minutes.

How would you use this site in your classroom?