To kick off a Mystery unit in literacy and to reinforce the searching skills the kids have been learning, the third grade participated in a Mystery Skype with another class in the world. Each class started by preparing a list of questions they would ask the other class to try to find out what city in the world they are located in. They then came up with a list of clues they could provide about Warsaw that would help the other class locate us. After all of the clues and questions were created, the kids divided into two teams -- the questioning team and the answering team. The questioning team was in charge of asking the questions to the other class and then selecting the best next question based on the answer that they received. The answering team was in charge of listening to the question the other class asked and coming up with the correct answer. Within each team, the students selected the roles that each team member would hold. The roles included lead researcher, map researcher, questioner, answerer, greeter, closer, key word researcher, and information recorders. Overall, our first Mystery Skype experience went very well and the students had a great time learning about another city. Our mystery city was Prague, Czech Republic!

Click here to learn more about Mystery Skype.

Watch the video below to watch our third graders in action.

 In this session teachers learned how to add  widgets to their dashboard.. They learned to add the basic widgets that are included as well as how to download widgets from the Apple site. They even learned how to create their own widget from an existing web page.