We have some exciting news…
We are participating in the Global Read Aloud this year! The GRA is a project where classrooms all over the world read the same book (over the same 6-week long period) and connect with other schools to amplify our learning through global connections.
This is the first time I (Morah Lianna) have participated in the GRA and I cannot wait. Each class (2A and 2B) have their own connections. We met our classes last week through “Mystery Calls“. I was so impressed by the way all of our students became leaders in their jobs for the mystery call. We prepared ourselves for the call by refreshing our memories about what exactly a yes/no question is. With that, we created a list of preliminary questions that we wanted to ask to help us narrow down their location. Each student played an integral role through the video calls… We had researchers using iPads and atlases to help think of new questions as we found out more information, question askers to be on screen during the video call and ask our questions, assistants who were in charge of the communication between question askers and researchers, and of course our documenters to take pictures and document the experience.
I was so impressed by both classes! We were able to figure out that one class was on a video call with a school in Greenville, North Carolina and the other class was on a video call with a class in Williston, Vermont.
This week, we began our reading for the GRA. We are reading Stella Diaz Has Something To Say by Angela Dominguez. We have read the first 4 chapters of the book and we are loving it so far! Today, our class used FlipGrid to connect with our partner classes in Greenville and Williston. We will continue to connect with our partner classes throughout the 6-week long GRA project.
Speaking of connecting globally… Both classes started Twitter accounts this week! We will be using our 2A and 2B twitter accounts to share what we are doing in class (instead of on Morah Lianna’s twitter account) and to become globally connected learners! We have already started by participating in a Math Chat with other Grade 2 classes in the United States. We even found other classes that are reading the same book as us for the GRA and replied to their beautiful artwork. We will be using Twitter to amplify our learning, connect with Grade 2 classes, and maybe even connect with some scientists, authors, or mathematicians! Please follow us on our learning journey!
