There are many curriculum topics that we can address when we participate in online global projects with our students. I have added this webpage for teachers so that they can see what we are doing and maybe see the value in using the Internet in the classroom.
Today Ann helped the boys round the temperature conversions because generally our conversions do not fall on an exact number. Ann (Mrs. Hansen) is Tevin and Gunnar's teacher and I am helping her since this is the first time she has participated in any kind of online exchanges among students.
These are some of the skills we have touched upon as we write to Dylan:
- Composing a letter with proper sentence structure and punctuation
- Gathering temperature data from Dylan and a webpage or newspaper
- Using the thermometer to estimate temperature conversion between Celsius and Fahrenheit
- Using a web page to verify our temperature conversion
- Making a chart or data table with temperature (later we will make a graph)
- Finding South Africa and Delmar on the map
- Discussing time and time zone differences
- Calculating the time for Cape Town compared to Delmar time.
- Discussing why you are in spring and we are ready for fall
- Discussing the Treasure oil spill and asking questoins about what happened to your penguins
I think this is quite a bit for 3 days!
Current Events Come Alive
Tevin and Gunnar spent time today reading and interpreting what Tracey wrote
to them. They also looked at pictures of penguins that I took (before the
oil spill) when I was in South Africa. And... because they are working on
singular and plural nouns in their classroom, they used a highlighter and
found singular and plural nouns in her message.
There is also lots of math in Tracey's message. We wonder how many penguins
she cleaned in her 10 hour days?
We all have those moments that warm our hearts. Tevin made Ann Hansen and I
beam today. He was eager to tell me about his "excellent" sentence that he
made for Mrs. Ellison's class. I believe the students were asked to write
sentences for their spelling words. One of the words was "brush" and Tevin
proudly told me his sentence. As background, remember that Tevin, Gunnar,
Ann and I are discussing the incident of the Treasure oil spill with Tracey in South Africa who cleaned some of the penguins covered with oil last June.
Tevin told me about his homework task:
"Tuesday on my homework I had to write 10 excellent sentences and one of my
sentences was - In South Africa a girl named Tracey helped clean penguins
with toothbrushes."
Now there's an *excellent* and *informed* sentence! Bless 'im!
