Happy fall everyone! I hope you all are settling into the school year well! I've been doing a ton of beginning of the year training on interactive boards and Google but this week I got to start doing the fun stuff. I took two second grade classes on a live drive and Q and A with a safari in South Africa and Kenya. I've talked about this here:)
I then combined two of my favorite edtech trends: the Mystery Location Call and Flipgrid! For those of you that are new to these here is a bit of an overview:
- A Mystery Location Call is a game played between two classes that are located in two different places in the world. Usually, the classes connect through something like Facetime, Skype, or Google Hangouts. They then ask each other yes and no geographical questions (i.e. Are you East of the Mississippi River?, Are you located in the Central time zone?, etc.). The object of the game is to geographically pinpoint the location of the other class. Go here to read how I used it in my class!
- Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to post questions, activities, etc. and students can respond to them though video. It is s super amazing tool to get kids speaking, communicating clearly, and is also a fabulous tool for students who struggle to communicate through the written word.
I worked with a 3rd class this week to combine the two! Instead of meeting live, we are sharing a
"topic" with another class and leaving each other daily video to respond to!
There is probably an easier way to do this but this is how I did it:
I created a Grid for Mystery Location Calls and set it for "PLCs and Public Grids".
I then created a topic and named it Mystery Location #1. The next classroom connection I'll make will be #2 and so on.
I shared the student link with the other teacher we are connecting with, so we actually can both access the "topic".
The class I was working with went first. They recorded a video and asked a question. Later that day, the other class recorded a video, answered our question, and asked us a question. This will continue until the first class can guess the location of the other class!
Another thing that I super love is that Flipgrid has a pretty good closed captioning option. I teach in a district with a high population of students that speak English as a second language and closed captioning is a great way to scaffold for them. The particular school I was working in this day also has a large population of students with a hearing impairment so I love that they can fully engage with this activity.
I will update you more at the end of this process! Here is a list of questions I give to kids to use for reference. I'm working on creating a free resource that will help you implement this in your classroom so stay tuned!
