Mrs. Schmidt's Classroom Blog

Yesterday, we had a great time speaking with Miss Oxlade and her students from Ecton Brook Primary School in Northampton, United Kingdom.  They are a Year 5 class which we think is comparable to 4th grade in the United States.  Miss Oxlade and I made a connection because both classes are taking part in the Student Blogging Challenge and she is a mentor teacher for several of my students.  The children in each class shared information about our school, country, hobbies, famous people and famous places from our area.   Their school has about 500 students in it and they told us about a time when the whole school went to the beach on a field trip.  It was very interesting to hear about places like the London Eye which is a famous Ferris wheel type ride that is over 400 feet tall and takes 1/2 and hour to ride.

www.flickr.com/photos/28397284@N00/3426814429

We talked to them about American Football and they told us about their football which is soccer for us.  Northampton is famous for shoes so their football (soccer) team is called the Cobblers.  They also showed us some neat British cars and I told them how much Mr. Schmidt enjoys watching the British show called Top Gear.

The children were surprised to find that we like the same kind of foods, online games, books, actors, TV shows and music.  The Class 10 students are very excited about the fact that the 2012 Olympics will be held in their country this year.  We also saw what their money looked like and we learned about Princess Diana.

Click the words below to see some video from the Skype.  We hope to keep our connection going with Class 10 by commenting on each others blogs.

Learning Logs

London Olympics

Here is a link to the post that Miss Oxlade wrote about our Skype – Class 10 Skypes America

Yesterday we Skyped with Mrs. Scalzo’s 5th grade class from Ballwin Elementary School in St. Louis.  Our classes are working together on the Flat Classroom Elementary Project.  We each shared some information about our states and schools.  There school goes from K-5th grade and has about 500 students with about 100 in their four 5th grades.  Our school only has about 240 students from PreK-8th and we only have 1 of each grade.  We learned that St. Louis is called the “Gateway to the Wes” and they have a giant arch.

Their capital is Jefferson City.  One student shared that the reason most of the states out west are shaped like rectangles is because Thomas Jefferson wanted it that way.  We enjoyed sharing some of our favorite things like sports, leisure time activities, and foods.  We told them about cheese steaks, soft pretzels and water ice from Philadelphia and they told us about Imo’s square pizza and toasted raviolis from St. Louis.  Thanks for the fun conversation!

Since we just finished learning about immigration in Social Studies, Mrs. Fleming came in to today to share her experiences about when she came over from Ireland in the late 80′s as a teenager. People were out of work and jobs were becoming scarce in Ireland at that time. So her father decided to sell everything and make the move to America to give his children a better life and more opportunities. Even though she knew how to speak English already, life in America was very different. Mrs. Fleming brought her Irish passport, a pound note of old Irish money, her certificate of citizenship, and a map of Ireland for us to look at.

We learned how to say a few words in Gaelic. Failte means hello. Beannachti na Feile Padraig means St. Patrick’s Day blessings to you! We even learned some Irish dancing and had cupcakes. Thanks Mrs. Fleming for a fun way to learn and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day at the same time!

Here is a short video of the dancing. Please forgive my horrible videographer skills!

Today my students and I took part in the World Blogging Project on Leap Day. It is a blog that will only be open for one day. Children and adults from all over the world are logging in to write a blog post. We had some fun topic ideas which included the number 29 in honor of leap year. Read our comments to see what we posted. Feel free to write your own post either on the website (if it is still 2/29)or as a comment for us! Happy Blogging!