The two second grade classes were communicating via skype while comparing and contrasting communities. Crestwood was more of a rural community and my class is more of a suburban community compared to Crestwood. The skype initially started with Crestwood's teacher asking if we knew what rural and urban meant. My class raised their hands and said they knew, but we expained that we were more of a suburban community rather than urban. She then went on to show us many pictures of their rural community. Their pictures were awesome! They showed us pictures of trees, bioswales, footprints, an ANIMAL HEAD, insects, and pictures of deer from their tracker that is placed in the woods outside their school. They then went live to show us the actual animal head and we had to guess what it was,(thank goodness we didnt have smell-o-vision Crestwood said). The head was actually turned inside out. It was inside out because another animal was eating all the meat from the inside (interesting fact). They then showed us their pet woolybear caterpillars and then gave us a few fun facts abou them. (Awesome Job Crestwood!)
My class then presented on our community. We had went outside and taken pictures of what was around our schoolyard. We took pictures of the housing around the school, a pepsi truck, a baseball field and footprints we found on it (geese and deer), a spa, and street signs. A different student explained each picture and answered questions asked by the other students. Then we were cut short because of time and our skype connection. Towards the end we kept disconnecting with the other class. Despite the bad connection, this was still a great experience!
This was my very first time doing a skype call, so I was not sure what to expect. There are many things I will do differently next time. I will not put my pictures in smart. I will just pu them in a slideshow. Also maybe not have specific presenters for each pictures, draw names instead. That way everyone has a chance. I was also thinking that I should have prepared questions for the other class to answer, to make it more interactive. Also, we may have wanted to touch more on urban communities, since the standard covers this too. Maybe we could have looked up pictures off the internet of total urban communities. I would like to do this again. That way I can improve what I need to improve on. If not with this class, with another. Great Job to all students!
Sorry I do not have video :(. . . We tryed to record, but it wasn't until the end that we realized we could not save it. Next time, I will use a video recorder, instead of smart recorder.
