Are you in the United States?

This month has become “Skype” busy! We started with Dino Skype. Then we moved to Mystery Skype. On Monday, I posted on our new library bulletin board that I was looking for ten  volunteers in grades 3-5 to mystery Skype on Friday at lunch recess. The sign up sheet filled up. Then on Friday they gathered in the library where I had maps and supplies spread out on tables. I included some sample questions to get the group started and we were off!   It turns out that we were connected with Mr. Tellgren’s 3rd grade class in Iowa. They are AWESOME at mystery Skype and have played the game over 20 times!  I think they had our state figured out within 5 questions. It took us a little longer, but we figured it out soon enough. Knowing which question to ask is not easy and takes a lot of geographical thinking.  

 

This group had such a great time that they asked to do it again. I put a request on Twitter with the hashtag #mysteryskype.

Within a day, we were set up for our session #2. This time, I knew it would be a bit more challenging. I set out maps of the US, but also the world, the provinces of Canada and the states in Mexico. A different group came to recess and were eager to begin. We had a few technical glitches with the internet, but we worked through them and kept trying. Eventually we had to stop video calling, and we could only audio call. However, both groups figured out the location of each other’s classroom! Here are a few scenes from our visit with Mr.Moya’s class in Ciudad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico! This city is near El Paso, Texas.

 “Can we do this again next week Mrs. Hembree?” It looks like we will be trying this again soon. I’m crossing my fingers that we will be able to connect with one of our partner schools in our Books to Africa program. That would be amazing!