Twitter #classroombookaday

Our crew has our own Twitter account. The students won't tweet until later in the year and even then it will require lots of help and supervision. We follow other primary grade classrooms around the world. We have a special connection with Mrs. Price's crew in Jindivick, Victoria, Australia and we will tweet with that class periodically throughout the year. To begin the year, I am doing the tweeting and I am tweeting pictures of the covers of books we read together as a crew using the hashtag #classroombookaday. You can follow our page to see what books we are reading and get ideas of books and authors your child might enjoy. You do not have to have a Twitter account to check out this page. If you do have a Twitter account, you can follow us. You can also find the link to our Twitter page on the sidebar of our crew blog if you want to check it out occasionally.

Tweeting Advice to Mrs. Price's Class

This afternoon we spent a little time tweeting our advice to Mrs. Price's class. This year she has all Preps (kindergarten students). We thought that since they are just beginning their school career they might like to hear our thoughts and advice to help them have a great year. This was a small service learning project for us - the service part was giving advice to younger students and the learning part was learning how to tweet and also reflecting on what kind of advice might be helpful to younger students. Click here to see all of the tweets on our class Twitter page. Below are screenshots of the tweets. We used the hashtag #prepadvice.

It was exciting when we began to get some responses, too.

In case you are wondering Mrs. Price's avatar is a picture of Wonder Woman, it is because primary grade students are so full of wonders that their teacher must be a wonder woman.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is PE.

News from Australia

Regina is home now and the new school year has started in Australia. Regina did a presentation for her whole school about her trip to the United States. It was so nice to meet her and learn more about her trip around the United States and her home country of Australia. I still can't believe that a little chat on Twitter between Mrs. Price and myself started all of this!

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ 6.12 Analyzing a Set of Data

Tweeting with Our Friends in Australia

Last week we learned how to use Twitter to tweet questions and comments to our friends in Australia. We are just getting started and hope to continue to do more in the future but we will see if this idea catches on with the crew. All of our tweets must be approved by a teacher before we can hit the "tweet" button (we want to be sure our audience can read our tweets - they don't have to be perfect just readable). Below is a sample of some of our tweets. Click here to see our crew Twitter page. Click on the pictures below to see a larger view.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 4.8 Telling Time

Library
No library this week because the Book Fair is in the library.

Our Connected Learning

We have been so lucky to connect with Mrs. Price and her class from Australia this year. We have learned so much from each other in just a few short months with plans for more. Earlier I wrote a post that shared some of the tweets that we have sent back and forth (click here to read the previous post) but I thought I would provide a little update on things we have learned since then.

A Few Things We Have Learned from Mrs. Price's Class
We learned about an animal that we had not heard of before. It is called an echidna. It lives in Australia and it looks like a porcupine with a long nose. Mrs. Price shared this video with us that she took while walking in a national park.




 We also learned that in Australia, McDonald's is called Maccas.

Source: Link

We learned about a yummy looking dessert called Pavlova that is a favorite in Australia.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauramacdonald/3460971856/lightbox/

 Mrs. Price sent us a picture of her Pavlova plate with the recipe in the center of the plate.

We also enjoyed getting this video from them so that we could hear their voices.

We also learned some interesting things about the largest rock in the world from Sam's grandma and Mrs. Price in the comments of this post.

A Few Things Mrs. Price's Class Has Learned from Us
They learned about Tellagami's by watching the Tellagami's that we posted on our Kidblog page. Here is Mrs. Price's Tellagami that she shared with us.
They saw how we created patterns using popsicle sticks (they call them icypole sticks) and wanted to try it themselves. They sent us some photos of their patterns. They were so creative with their patterns. We saw more pictures. This is just a sample of the photos.

They also learned more about our American holiday of Halloween. They enjoyed watching the slideshow of our costumes on our blog.

We are going to try to Skype with their class tomorrow afternoon. (Let's hope we don't have any technical issues.) Our crew also wants to begin a conversation about coins/money in our countries so we can notice any similarities and differences. So much to learn!

Important Dates
11/15 Guest Speaker about the language and homes in China - Mr. Mike - Brandon's dad

11/18 - 11/21 Climbing in PE for our crew - sign up to help belay - we really need some volunteers
Fall Climbing 2013

11/21 Family Thanksgiving Lunch in our cafeteria 

11/22 Fieldwork at Joyous Chinese Cultural Center

11/18 - 11/22 Scholastic Book Fair in our library. Family Night at the Book Fair is Tuesday 11/19 from 4:30 to 7:30.

11/27, 11/28 and 11/29 No School - Thanksgiving Holiday

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 3.13 Favorite Colors

Gifts from Australia

The crew was so excited to get a package from our Twitter friends from Australia.  Mrs. Price's class sent us pictures and stories about themselves along with Australian flags, banners, stickers, books, brochures, balloons and little stuffed koala bears. We enjoyed looking through the package and immediately began thinking of ideas for things we can send them. Enjoy the pictures below. Click on the pictures to see a larger image.

Our New Twitter Friends

We have made some new friends through our crew Twitter account this year and we are already learning so much from them. We are only in the getting to know you stage of our friendship and we hope to learn more and maybe collaborate on some projects in the future.

The first friends we made were Mrs. Price's class from Victoria, Australia. In just a few short days, we have already learned so much about Australia, time zones, weather and more. Below are a few short snippets of our Twitter conversations with them but these are always followed by more discussion and map viewing in our classroom. Enjoy the snippets and feel free to check out our crew Twitter account @MsJillsCrew for more of the conversation. They have sent us more questions tonight that we will answer and discuss tomorrow.

 

 

We have also started conversations with two classes from Ohio, Mrs. Mere's class and Mrs. Frazier's class. Here are the beginnings of those conversations.

 

We can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring.  Be sure to ask your child about this and maybe follow along with us on Twitter.