Marvelous Muffins: Lauching a New Project

We have interacted with a number of different classroom partners this year through Skype, Twitter and email.  These interactions allow us to learn from other classes and experts, while practicing communication and collaboration skills.  Early in the school year, an African educator contacted me through the British Council education website to establish a classroom partnership.  He was able to share videos of his class reciting poetry in their classroom in Ghana, Africa.  My class watched the videos and learned the same poems.  We also sent back some samples of our work to share.  This winter, we started sending Tweets to Mr. Eric.  One day, a student asked if the African classroom had computers like us.  I wasn't sure of the technology available in their room, so we sent a Tweet to ask Mr. Eric.  We learned that they don't have computers and that Mr. Eric could only email and Tweet us from his computer at home.

When I visited Mrs. Hembree's class while in Redmond, WA for Hack the Classroom, her class had just finished raising money to buy postage for their Books to Africa project.  Upon my return to school, I shared her students' project with my Grade 1s.  They thought they might be able to help kids in Africa too, so we decided to ask Mr. Eric if his class could use our help somehow.  We learned that books and school supplies would be much appreciated by their class and from there, an exciting project has launched.

Earlier in the school year, students had brought up the idea of having a bake sale.  This idea came up again when discussing how our class could raise money to purchase school supplies for Mr. Eric's class.  After some discussion, negotiation and class voting, students decided to have a muffin sale to raise money for the supplies they'd like to purchase for our partner classroom.  Further discussion, brainstorming and voting led to our project name - Marvelous Muffins!