Catching Up - Tool #7

I am new to 2nd grade this year, so I can really only think of an upcoming unit in social studies called "Me on the Map."This introduces students to map skills that include types of landforms, and where they live. I think it is also important to teach students that we are not the only people on this map and a great way to do this would be to communicate with students in another part of the world.

I have used Skype to communicate with a friend who is teaching at a school in Abu Dhabi. I think it could be an amazing experience to contact her about having my class meet with a 2nd grade class in her school. My plan would be to create a lesson (along with the teacher in Abu Dhabi) where students could compare themselves The objective would be for students to compare their lives, their likes/dislikes, and their schooling to those of children who live around the world.

I viewed the tips on the following website - http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/02/06/framing-a-skype-learning-experience/ - about "Framing a Skype Learning Experience" and found some good ideas about making this project work. I like the idea of giving each student a job such as greeter, videographer, photographer, and those who ask individual questions. I think it would also be important to have a few "secretaries" to record all of the information given! This teacher also gave the advice of having students practice their questions using a recording and video program so they could make sure they are speaking clearly.

This would be a complicated project, but a rewarding one for sure. Unfortunately, I just realized while typing this idea that students in Abu Dhabi would probably not be in school while we are, SO to make this project work, we could instead create a blog or class email account specifically for this purpose and email questions as videos so that students could still see each other!