Global Read Aloud 2018

Somehow it is November and I've barely blogged.   It seems like my school year started off as a whirlwind, as it does for many educators.   As the Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for Park West School Division, one of the projects I've been supporting over the last several weeks is Global Read Aloud (GRA).   The GRA was a wonderful experience when I participated with my students in my own classroom and now that I work in many classrooms, I've really enjoyed seeing our students and teachers around PWSD get involved with this project!   Thanks to all of the educators and students that welcomed me to join them for Global Read Aloud activities this year!

What makes the Global Read Aloud so fantastic?

I'm not sure that I can fully explain why the Global Read Aloud is so meaningful, but I think there are three key elements that I really appreciate:

Rich literature: Global Read Aloud founder, Pernille Ripp, chooses excellent books for this project each year.   This year's choices were no exception.   The GRA books address important topics, inspire thoughtful conversations and really get us thinking.   I love that good books are at the center of this project. 

Connecting with Others:  The idea behind GRA is "one book to connect the world".   I'm passionate about students and teachers making connections beyond the classroom and I think that Global Read Aloud provides a great opportunity to build those connections.   Participating classrooms typically connect with at least one other class to discuss the book, get to know each other and share their learning. Participating classes can plan as many different connections as they wish, and there is plenty of sharing happening throughout the GRA.

Making the World a Little Smaller: There is something so special about being in a classroom when students are connecting with others in another province or country and they realize they have things in common.   Maybe they also learn about the differences that exist between them or their communities and this helps foster an acceptance of differences and appreciation for what makes us unique.   I like seeing students share their ideas about a book with others - to have a real audience outside the classroom considering their thoughts.   I also think it is so important that students get to consider others' opinions on these books and topics.   The GRA gives students an opportunity to see new perspectives, from students and teachers around the globe.

Global Read Aloud: A High School Perspective

The following is a guest blog post from high school teacher, Ms. Beccy Ardiel.  Beccy tried out the Global Read Aloud with some of her high school ELA students this year.  Read below for her thoughts on GRA in the high school classroom!

Beccy's Reflection on Planning and Preparing
Global Read Aloud was a program I had never heard of but was excited to try out!  I couldn't decide which class to work with, so I decided to have my grade 9 Reading is Thinking class read A Long Walk to Water and my grade 11 ELA class read A Monster Calls. I was a bit hesitant on how to start, so I began by seeking out people to collaborate with on Edmodo. Finding people was easy - finding teachers who had classes at the same time as my two classes was not as easy! We began discussing ideas for collaborative activities and came up with some letter writing ideas, as well as posting to Padlet and Flipgrid - two apps I had never heard about before, but I am now very knowledgeable! Shortly before the program was to begin, we received a lengthy compilation of resources that had been created for each of our novels. This document was amazing! I sifted through, found things that worked for my classes or things that I could use/change to suit my learners and with that, we began GRA!


Global Read Aloud - Connecting and Learning
My grade 9 students were much more into collaboration and we made a video about our community/school/class. These students created a padlet post about themselves and we watched Flipgrid videos, and even made our own, as a way to connect with our penpals in New Jersey. We never did arrange a Skype, but that is ok. Once the program began, I realized that you can do as much as you want or focus on a few small scale tasks, in terms of collaboration, and you are still able to participate on a global scale. We had Mrs. Obach come in to help us navigate the Twitter page better and this was a good spring board for what we made our routine - posting to Twitter after we completed our weekly reading sections. A personal high point was having the author of the novel like a couple of our tweets!

My grade 11 students were less interested in the face-to-face collaboration. We created introductory padlets and invited other students in my collaborative partner's schools to join. It was neat to learn and read about fellow students all over the world. When it came to discussing their thoughts and feelings about the text, my students were more interested in posting to Twitter than any other suggested method. We commented on other classes tweets and initiated some conversations/lesson ideas with our own and this in itself was pretty fascinating! A few of our tweets sparked discussion with other educators and this feedback really was unlike anything the students have experienced - people outside of our buidling were giving them powerful feedback about their ideas and interpretations and it was an awesome to deliver this message to them!


Looking Ahead
I am curious to find out what texts will be a part of this program next year! I would also love to have the chance create the Twitter questions at some point in the future! If I was to do it all over again, I might suggest doing it with one class as it did take a lot of time to prepare for two separate texts. That being said, I enjoyed both texts so much that I don't think I could have picked one over the other, so I'll have to see what next year brings!

Thanks to Mrs. Obach for opening my eyes to such a worthwhile and engaging learning experience - for both myself and for my students!

Marvelous Muffins: Fundraising Success!

With the help of some great volunteers and one of our partner classrooms, we completed our baking for the Marvelous Muffins project before spring break.  One of our jobs upon returning to class was to calculate how much money we raised.  Using base ten blocks, we counted out the number of dollars we collected from muffin orders.  Then, we "traded" some blocks so we could subtract the number of dollars we spent on groceries.  Next, we counted up the remaining blocks to find out how much money we raised.  The grade 1 class was excited to celebrate that they raised $494 to purchase school supplies for Mr. Eric's class in Ghana, Africa! 

 
Mr. Eric sent us some photos of his school and classroom so that our class could see what it is like there.  We noticed that they have the alphabet on the wall just like us and they also have tables and chairs like us.  We also noticed that they have different school supplies than us and we are excited to send them some new supplies to use in their classroom!  Our next step is selecting and ordering supplies for their classroom.

 

Marvelous Muffins: Taking Orders

One of the steps in our Marvelous Muffins project was to create order forms.  Once we'd decided on kinds of muffins and prices, we did some shared writing to develop our order forms.  Students suggested information to include on the forms and I typed.  Since our shared work is always projected on our SMARTboard, students also proofread and suggested revisions as we developed the order forms.  When the order forms were ready, students counted out enough for each grade and sent forms home to each family in our school. 

We were very excited to see muffin orders coming in right away!  To keep track of the number of orders, we worked together as a class.  Students took turns reading aloud order forms and tallying the orders on our class chart.  After we tallied, we counted by 5s and 10s to find out how many orders we had for each kind. As more orders came in, we added to our chart and updated the totals.  It was great reading and math practice for us!   This week, we finished tallying and counting all orders.  Our school community has shown us tremendous support - check out the order tally!

Next, students wanted to calculate the total number of orders. The numbers are pretty large for grade 1 mathematicians, but before I knew it, students were putting their mental math skills to good use!  One student suggested starting with 60+40=100 and from there we continued adding up our orders using mental math.  You can see our thinking below (impressive mental math!).  Our grand total is 179 orders - that's 1074 muffins! 

Student Teaching in grade 1!

It sure has been a great five weeks here in Mrs. Obach's class! The Grade ones have taught me so many new things like coding, how to use Book Creator, and how to do Daily Five ELA and Math. I have so enjoyed my time at HES and am very sad to be leaving.

Our last book for week 6 of the Global Read Aloud was Friendshape by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Amy Krouse Rosenthal used shape characters to remind us what good friends do. There were also lots of funny jokes that we really enjoyed. After reading Friendshape we decided to create our own friendshape pictures  and write about what we felt was important for a good friend to do. We used fun paper cut-out shapes to create our pictures. We sure had a great time doing this activity!

Amy Krouse Rosenthal has certainly become a favorite other for all of us here in grade one.

Global Read Aloud: The OK Book

Our week 5 book for The Global Read Aloud was The OK Book.  We were so inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal's work that we wrote our own OK book with our student teacher, Miss. Barkley.  Check out our book:

Global Read Aloud: There Was Much Exclaiming

Our book for week 4 of the Global Read Aloud was ! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  Our class really enjoyed this wonderful story about an exclamation mark learning that it is okay to be different.  In the story, the exclamation mark learns to exclaim all sorts of fun words and phrases.  We had a great time writing and exclaiming our own words and phrases.  Using ChatterPix, we even made the ! character do the talking!  Check out our work below:




We really enjoyed exclaiming all sorts of things and I know this will be a valuable activity to build on as we learn to be expressive Grade 1 readers!  I loved the positive message that this book shared about embracing our individuality and special talents.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal is fast becoming our favourite author with her meaningful, yet entertaining and funny books.  Check out the book trailer for !  here. 

Global Read Aloud: More than Just Reading!

We kicked off the Global Read Aloud on October 5th and we've had so much fun reading and learning together since then.  The GRA is a wonderful opportunity to promote rich, deep learning while connecting and collaborating with other classrooms.  Our class is interacting with classrooms in Ohio, Illinois, Virginia and Thailand to engage in a variety of activities linked to the GRA books.

Here's a sample of what we've been up to:

Making Connections
We shared our personal connections to the text Chopsticks on a digital Padlet bulletin board.  Check out our ideas at the 2KG blog.  It was interesting to read how other students connected to the text and their ideas even inspired more connections from our class.

Vocabulary Building & Word Study
We loved our first book, Chopsticks, and reread it MANY times.  We used our Daily 5/CAFE literacy strategy "Tune in to Interesting Words" to learn new vocabulary and created a Mindmeister web of words to share with our partner classrooms.

Inspired by the students in 2KG class in Thailand, we studied compound words and shared our list with our partner classrooms. 

Data Collection & Graphing
We completed the 2KG online survey for Duck! Rabbit! They found out that more students thought it was a rabbit. 

We also graphed our class opinions for Duck, Rabbit and shared with our partner classrooms.  

In preparation for a Skype discussion with Ms. Loverde's class, we collected data and graphed our favourite book so far.  When we met on Skype, each class shared their results and we found that both classes like It's Not Fair the best.  Then, students from both classrooms took turns sharing which book they liked the best and why.  We had a lot in common - many of us liked the same parts of books or enjoyed the books for similar reasons. 

Skype Story time - a cross-classroom read aloud!
Sadly, our copy of It's Not Fair is STILL backordered.  Thankfully, we have awesome partner classrooms willing to help us out.  Mrs. Grodek and her class in Brooklyn, Ohio read the story with us on Skype earlier this week and also recorded it for us to enjoy.

I can hardly believe that we are halfway through the Global Read Aloud!  We have had so many great learning experiences so far and we are really enjoying this special author study! 

Global Read Aloud: Chopsticks & Meeting 2KG

Today our Global Read Aloud books by Amy Krouse Rosenthal arrived!  We were so excited to see our set of books for this reading project. 

Right away, we decided to read aloud this week's featured book, Chopsticks.  Our class thought it was funny and we enjoyed the beautiful illustrations.

We also met another GRA partner classroom today!  The 2KG class in Bangkok, Thailand sent us a video to say hello.  Using Bing Maps, we added their city to our map and looked at how far away they are from us! 

We were also surprised to learn that at 11AM this morning in Canada it was already 11PM in Thailand.  In order to share our ideas and learn with our new friends, we will have to use messages and videos rather than live video calls.  We started by sharing ideas on this Padlet board created by 2KG teachers Ms. Jennifer Baccon & Ms. Kathryn Grossi.  Their focus question for us was "How did you connect to this book?"  Many students in our class could relate to being separated from a special person (just like the Chopsticks decide to spend time apart in the book).

We are looking forward to learning more about the 2KG class and sharing our ideas about our read aloud books!

Making Connections Across the Globe!

Not only is my great group of "connected kids" making connections across the country, but they are also making connections across the globe.  This week, a visitor arrived from Ireland!    His name is Matt and he came in this envelope all the way from his home in Tramore.

Are you curious yet??

Matt, also known as "Flat Matt",  was sent to us by a 1st Class (six and seven year olds) at Glor na Mara Primary School who connected with our class on Twitter.  You can follow them here: @blognamara

We are so excited to look inside Matt's scrapbook and learn more about his home in Ireland!  The students at Glor na Mara have included photos and captions to show us and tell us all about their school and community.   As Matt travels the world, his twin brother, Jim, will be traveling around Ireland.  Their progress will be documented in their scrapbooks and online at the Adventures of Matthew and Jim blog.  We are feeling lucky to be included in this interesting project and we can't wait to show Matt around our school and community!

 

Microsoft Global Forum: Day 3

Day 3 was a unique day of the Microsoft Global Forum.  Educators from around the world were put into international teams of 4-6 people to work together.  Our goal was to create a learning activity that we could do with our classes after the forum.  I was thrilled to work with some excellent educators, including Jennifer Bevill of the United States, Gerard Duffy from Ireland and Mohammad BaniYounes of Jordan.  After many hours, we had created an exciting learning activity Challenge to Change.  I'm so proud of our collaborative work and I'm really looking forward to launching the activity in the future.  Our plan is:

Using ICT, students from four countries will work together to address sustainability issues. 

Driving Questions:

·         What are the environmental sustainability issues in your area?

·         What can you do to make a difference? 

·         How can you encourage others to take action on sustainability issues?

Phase 1: Acting Locally, Collaborating Globally

• Making Connections:  Students will meet each other via video conference

• Knowledge Construction: Students in each classroom will research to identify sustainability issues in their community.  Working in collaborative teams, students will create a presentation to share their findings with the other 3 classrooms

• Sustainability Conferences:  Classrooms connect a second time to conduct presentations to share the sustainability issues they have identified in their communities.   

• Creating Action Plans:  Teams of students will work together to develop an action plan that address their sustainability problem.   Final action plans will be shared with all four classrooms.

• Taking Action:  Students will collaborate to implement their action plans to make a difference in their community.  Actions, progress, results with international team members to ensure accountability.

• Follow up:  Each classroom will share their results with all classrooms.  This may include successes, difficulties and the impact that their local action plan had. 

Phase 2: Scaling Up the Impact
Once students have taken action locally, they will shift to a global focus.  For this phase, students will be grouped in cross-classroom, international teams.

• International Team Meetings:  Students will work in international teams to identify a global environmental sustainability issue to address.  

• Challenge to Change:  Each international team will identify one action that people could take to impact the global environment.  This will become part of  the “Challenge to Change” – a global challenge to encourage others to take action.  Students will design the challenge and promote it publicly to empower others to take action.  Our hope is that the challenge will involve our wider communities, state/province or even our whole countries making a contribution to environmental sustainability!

After another busy day, we had our Team Canada dinner last night.  We went out for supper and a Flamenco performance.  It was a great outing, but I was so exhausted that I almost couldn't stay awake!  It was straight to bed for me after the show!