I am super excited to announce our next collaborative project. This project has been on the back burner for months now, and we are finally ready to begin.
Mrs. Soltauheller and I have done many collaborative projects with our classes over the past 2 years, and I think this one is the most exciting! We wanted the project to incorporate writing, science and social studies. We also wanted there to be an authentic audience for our students to attract more interest and to grab our students' attention.
We decided on choosing an animal or insect to send each other that lives where we live, but does not live where the other class lives. Mrs. Soltauheller's school is on Vancouver Island and we live in Ontario. Mrs. Soltauheller chose the orca whale and I chose (with a little help from my principal) the praying mantis. We agreed that we would mail each other the stuffy and that we would create a blog for the animal on our classroom kidblog accounts. Students will begin taking home the whale (named Haley) or the praying mantis (Elroy) TODAY! Students will be taking Hayley over night and blog about their adventures. After everyone has a chance to take Hayley home we will do an Inquiry about orca whales and answer our Essential Question, "Why don't orca whales live in Windsor, Ontario? We will then share our projects with each other via Skype.
To add to the excitement of this project, my students will be taking home an iPad with Hayley to document their adventures.
This past Friday we brainstormed ways to fairly choose the order in which Hayley would go home with. We then googled it and found a website that randomizes lists for you. We typed in all the students names and hit the randomizer button and just like that we had a list! The kids thought it was magic! Here is a screenshot of the list:
I made a schedule and sent the calendar home with the students. If you would like to check out how Hayley is doing, check out her blog here
Mrs. Wideen I am one of the students in Mrs. Gates reading guorp. I like reading your post. I like what you did I was read your past and you ues one animal and one bug. If we did that project we would send an armadillo because it's a symbol of Texas. I would love to learn about a praying mantis.
ReplyDeleteEvelin from Ms. Gates Reading Group
We made some predictions as to why the orca whale does not live in Ontario:
ReplyDelete1] There is no ocean near Ontario -- Avery
2] It's a little bit too cold -- Connor
3] They need a big place to play -- Jordyn and Sambhav
4] There is no salt water -- Oliver and Christian