Seward Alaska is building bridges to the future with the K-2 project!

Group 3: Country Day participates in Teacher Summit

This Thursday, Flat Classroom teachers participated in a Teacher Summit to celebrate and share the reflections we have looking back on our Building Bridges to Tomorrow K-2 Project.  We loved sharing about our love of Montessori education and integration of technology into our program.  Here are some great photos of our students from Turkey and Florida creating and sharing through mail!

In celebration of our collaboration and co-creation, our groups created a Prezi sharing our Me on the Map experience.

Me on the Map Project on Prezi

Games We Play

Here is our eBook we made on Games We Play. If you would like to add your games to this shared eBook, please free to do so by clicking here.

Class 2 in Kortkerosskaya secondary school is making some spring salad. They don't have Cooking in their curriculum yet. Class 11 helped Nastya to make it.

Spring salad on PhotoPeach

Group 12

Our Group:

Tatiana Visheralina, Kortkerosskaya Secondary School, Kortkeros, Russia, Ages 7 and 8

Maria Knee, Deerfield Community School, NH USA, Ages 5 and 6

Fiona MacNicol-Clark, A.B. Dixon, BC, Canada, Age 7

Lindsay Bava (Theresa Allen), Cathedral of St. Raymond, Joliet, IL , USA, Ages 5 and 6

Link to our wiki page:  http://k2-pilot.flatclassroomproject.org/Group+12

Ms. Bava's Class Making Applesauce

Group 2 - Making A Meal - Making our Global Friends Meal

This week Ms. Lirenman's class in Canada, made Mrs. Kaput's classes applesauce from the USA. Here is a video showing us learning from our friends in the USA.

 

Ms. Lirenmans' class making Mrs. Kaput's classes salsa from Mexico.




Ms. Lirenman's class making Ms. Pih's classes jam from Hong Kong.

The View from our Phuket Window

As part of the K-2 Building Bridges project we are collaborating to create a ‘View from the Window.’  Teachers and students from all groups in the project are collecting and sharing images that show the ‘views’ from our windows around the world.

At British International School, Phuket we shared a book called “Window” by Jeannie Baker then had a look out of our own classroom window.  After recording our ideas we decided to go for a walk with our class cameras and take some photos.


We found banana trees and a beautiful lady hiding in our garden…

We even found an elephant!

Group 2: Making a Meal and More!

Students from Ms. Lirenman, Canada, Mrs. Kaput, USA, and Mrs. Phi's classrooms, Hong Kong, have prepared meals to share with their group.  First the original classroom creates a type of video/slideshow with a recipe for the two other classrooms to make as well.

Our culminating video!

Here are the original videos for the other classrooms to watch, learn, and create:

Original Recipes:

Mrs. Kaput's class making applesauce:

Mrs. Kaput's class - A View From Our School:  https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=108872379925643026688&target=ALBUM&id=5727924318660046177&locked=true&authkey=Gv1sRgCI6w36PqmOiQFw&feat=email

Ms. Lirenman's class making GimBap:


Ms. Lirenman's class making Worms and Dirt:


Ms. Lirenman's Class Making Adobo


Ms. Lirenman's Class Making Sri Lanka Coconut Toffee


Ms. Lirenman's Class Making Iraq Baclava with Cream
 

Ms. Lirenman's Class Making Crepes


Mrs. Kaput's Class Making Salsa:

VoiceThread Sharing

The 3 and 4 year old Nursery children at British International School, Phuket are one of the youngest groups taking part in the K-2 Building Bridges to Tomorrow global collaborative project.  We have had a wonderful start introducing ourselves to our Group 9 co-classes in Australia and in the United States using VoiceThread to share audio clips and images. 

This was our first class exploration into the Web 2.0 world and we LOVED it!  VoiceThread proves to be an easy and fun tool that young children can use with limited adult support.  It can be integrated into a regular classroom routine in a number of ways including:

            -to extend children who gravitate toward computer/camera play

            -to develop essential speaking and listening skills

            -to share accomplishments with families and the wider school community

I am inspired to continue to use VoiceThread in my classroom and see endless possibilities for mini-projects focused on my learners’ individual interests and needs that I can share virtually with families. 

How do you use VoiceThread in your classroom?

Group 3: Me on the Map

This week students from all four classes across the globe read the same story Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney and then all the students created the same art project.  Each project answered the same questions, but with each school filling in their own geographical information starting with "Me on the Map", city, state, country, continent, and then planet.  It was interesting to see that though we live in different places, we all live together on Earth!

If you are having troubles posting...try this

I have heard from a couple people that it is not allowing them to post. I have noticed myself on occasion that the pencil is not on the blog site for me to write a new post even when I am logged in. If this happens, try this:
1. Go to www.blogger.com and make sure you are signed in.
2. From there you should be able to see a page like this where you can access the pencil:

Let me know if you still are having troubles posting. Celestinajolley@celestinajolley.com

Group 3: Taking a "Trip"

This week in Flat Classroom, we had students locate our new friends' locations and find out several types of information:
1. temperature in F
2. weather
3. time
4. time zone

We were surprised to find that Hong Kong was the warmest of the four cities.  We were not shocked to see that Minnesota had the coldest temperatures.  Mrs. Metka gave a Montessori lesson on time zones using a flashlight to represent the sun and a globe to represent Earth.  This shows how one side of the Earth is bright from the Earth's light, but the other side is in darkness at night!



Untitled from Jennifer Williams on Vimeo.
We used www.tripline.net to create a fictional "trip" to see our new friends!  We wrote about the weather in each of our "stops!"
 

Group 3: Our Hands Reach Across the Globe

In K time, Mrs. Metka worked with the Kindergarteners to locate all the schools in our Flat Classroom group by looking on a Montessori globe, map, and iPad.  They found Turkey, Hong Kong, and Minnesota.  Then, they used many shades to paint their hands to make handprints to send to our friends around the globe to "shake hands!

Group 3: Florida Handshake

Recently, our school received the honor of being selected as one of 40 schools worldwide to participate in a Flat Classroom project for students in grades K-2 entitled “Building Bridges to Tomorrow.”  Flat Classroom Projects are innovative, web-based projects that transform learning through global collaboration.  Schools worldwide are partnered and assigned a topic.  We have been assigned to school partners from Hong Kong (Kindergarten), Turkey (4-year-old class) and Minnesota (Kindergarten).  With our group, we will develop “My Day at School:  A View from the Window.”  Together, our students from 1st grade and Kindergarten will work with students from across the globe to design and create a digital project using Web 2.0 tools over the next eight weeks.  At the end of the project period, projects are published online and the schools celebrate together “digitally!” Our Voicethread "video" is a sample of our first step, called the "Handshake" activity.

Group 5's "Handshakes"

We created jigsaw puzzles for students to put together in order to learn about each other.

Here is an example of one of these jigsaws:


These are some other fun "handshakes" we did:

How to use tags in this blog

Below are some screen shots to guide you through using tags/labels within this blog. The idea is to always tag your group number and also tag the word "everyone" when you want to share out to other groups.  You can also view posts by labels.