The Futuristic Foxes: October 2015

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Our skype with Africa!

Today we skyped with Livingstone Kegode who lives in a small village called Kimilille in Nairobe, Kenya, Africa! We shared our classroom pets while he shared a slideshow and information about the wild animals that live in Africa. Below are pictures we took during the skype and pictures HE took during the skype. Also, I have attached the presentation he shared with my students. It was like a trip to the zoo, but the animals were not in cages! They were in their natural habitat!

Our pic of Livingstone during the skype

Our pic of Livingstone sharing his presentation

Our pic of us during the skype

Pic of the class taken by Livingstone

Pic of our tortoise Thurman taken by Livingstone

Us sharing our pets with Livingstone

Friday, October 16, 2015

The Global Read Aloud

The Futuristic Foxes are participating in The Global Read Aloud 2015. In short, the Global Read Aloud is a program where thousands of teachers and students from around the world are reading aloud the same novel for six weeks. There are five different books to choose from based on the students' ages and interest. To learn more about, go to this link: http://theglobalreadaloud.com/about-the-gra/faq/ or watch the video below:

The Futuristic Foxes have chosen to read the book, Fish by L. S. Matthews.

Some of the ways we are interacting with the book include: Twitter, Write About It, and Skype. So far on Twitter, we are following other classrooms who are reading the book Fish, including a sixth grade class in our own school who have named themselves The Terrific Tigers. We comment on others posts and make posts of our own. While Mrs. Abernethy is reading the book, we often use sketchnoting. We share our sketches on Twitter and ask others to comment by asking them questions about our pictures. Below are some pictures we have sketched and posted so far.

We also use a program called Write About, https://www.writeabout.com/. We were give a free account when we signed up for the Global Read Aloud. Each of us have our own blog. We write responses to the book and share them with others reading the book. We are especially excited to chat about the book with the sixth grade class in our school reading the book too. We will be able to read and comment on their blog posts and they will be able to do the same on ours. We are also connected with a class from Australia, so that should be fun, too.

Last, but not least, we plan to skype with other classrooms reading the book and hopefully with the author of the book. We just finished week two and with four weeks to go, I am sure we will find even more exciting ways to collaborate and connect with others locally and globally.

Maker's Club

East Elementary has started a Friday morning club called Maker's Club. It is so popular that more than seventy students are in the club! There are three different sections. One is the STEAM Team, one is Creation Station, and one is High Tech. View pictures below from today's club activities.