The thing that I loved about the chat was the students were learning about culture from native speakers and students. The only thing that would have been better would have been going to South America. My students loved seeing the other students and loved hearing how they do things differently. The student's then wrote an e-mail (using the smartboard) and sent to to the class in South America. The letter was about how they had so much fun learning and talking to them. Then they arranged another date in which they are going to chat. The teacher's goal was to chat every other month. This goes along great with Social Studies GLEC's!
This is so neat!! I only wish I could have done that when I was in elementary school. This is such a great tool when teaching students about other areas of the world. I think students believe that they have nothing in common with other countries. Like you said, the students were able to see the similarities! This is really something to keep in mind when coming up with lessons when we teach on our own. I am definitely going to look into this more when I have a classroom of my own :)
ReplyDeleteMegan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alison. This is so neat! My field placement class revently Skyped with my CT's daugher in Australia too. However, talking with another class in another country reaches the students at a whole other level. This is a great activity to promote cultural literacy. How did she come in contact with this teacher in South America? What country was it?
Cheers,
Kaitlyn
*recently
ReplyDeleteThat is so cool! I never thought about using skype in the classroom. Skypeing with another class in South America would be a great social studies lesson. I bet the students were really engaged and interesting in learning. By skypeing with another class in a different country students are able to really learn about the culture and see the many similarities there are between them and the South America students.
ReplyDeleteWell the school that I am at is an International Baccalaureate School (IB). This is just a program in which students connect their classroom learning to real life situations. This school was from Brazil and is also an IB school. IB schools are always in contact with each other through conferences and what not. So I'm not sure how one would go about finding a school to participate in something like this. I'll try to look into more and ask my teacher for suggestions and keep you guys posted!!
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