A Skype Call is a Learning Call - Pre-Call Activities

This week I've been working with our librarian and our Grade 3 teachers to prepare our students for a skype call with the poet Kenn Nesbitt on Friday.  The students are working on the How We Express Ourselves unit of inqury which is focusing on poetry and song.  For these skype activities I've drawn heavily from the excellent  blog post and resources from Silvia Tolisano.

On Monday this week, the librarian and I had the students together in the library and we did an introduction so the students would know what to expect on Friday.  The students worked in pairs to find out information about Kenn Nesbitt, using his website Poetry4Kids.  Our library has several copies of his books, so the students were able to read his poems at that time too.

Today I worked with one Grade 3 class to get ready for the skype call.  First of all we talked about the different jobs students would be doing before, during and after the skype call.  One student would be using Google Earth to find where Mr Nesbitt lives (in Spokane, Washington State) and another would be using Google Maps to find out what it was like in Spokane using the street view.  Two students would work together to find out about the USA using various web sites.  Jobs that are allocated for the actual call involve asking questions (all students will get the opportunity to ask questions - they are working in pairs on their questions), taking photographs and taking video and notes.  Other jobs will be done after the skype call such as putting the photos into a slideshow, putting the movie onto YouTube and writing on the class blog.

Right after that session the students who were working on the pre-call activities came to the computer lab with me and started work.  They took screen-shots and posted them on the class blog and used the internet to find out various facts - such as the fact that Spokane is 9 hours behind us here in Switzerland. We will be speaking to Mr Nesbitt at 9am, but for him it will be midnight!

We're excited to be involved in this great learning activity and are looking forward to our skype chat.