Mystery Skype's Bring Other Students, Teachers & Experiences To Our Third Graders In Iowa!

What a fun day!  This was the day our third graders in Mrs. Volk and Mrs. Garrison's 3rd grade classrooms participated in Mystery Skype's with two classrooms in different parts of the United States. 

To get ready for this day, the students have been researching different states to create Mystery State Buncee's for classmates and others to view and guess the states.  You can read all about the project here in this post. 

We added their Buncee's to the Mystery State Buncee Board to make it easy for sharing.  You will find it here and we hope you use it to have your students guess the states too. 

As they finished their Buncee's and took time to research and guess each others, we also planned several Mystery Skype's as a culminating activity. Our students were so excited and took...

 ...the jobs they came up with and were assigned very seriously when it was time to Skype.

I love how we managed the Mystery Skype's today. 

We did two with Mrs. Volk's class, however for the first one, she took half of the class out in the hallway to work on the Mystery State Buncee's and I kept the others in the classroom.  After our 30 minute Skype, we switched.  It worked really great having a smaller group of students because everyone had a chance to participate and interact with the other students and teachers we connected with.

 Our first Skype was with my friend, Michelle Carton.

They worked so hard asking questions and trying to figure out where in the United States they were located.

It was awesome when they used the globe to figure out where they were. You must watch the video to hear when Drake makes the big guess to find out they are in..... ! 

The next class connected with....

...my friend Michael Drezek. 

It was neat watching both groups work together using the maps to make notes as the questions were asked and answers were given.

And they sure were proud when they guessed our new friends were from...New York!

Thank you Michelle, Michael and all of your students for connecting with us at Van Meter!  We can't wait to connect with you again. 

And tomorrow, more of our third graders can't wait to connect with two more groups of students somewhere in the United States....and again next week when we connect with two very special locations.  

Mystery Skype's are one of my favorite ways to connect our students and community to others around the world.  These are events that give us special experiences, different perspectives and a little glimpse into the world and lives of others.  

As we get ready for the end of the year, we are also getting ready for a BIG new year of Mystery Skype's next year.  

You can also do this by visiting the Mystery Skype page on the Skype in the Classroom/Microsoft site. Here you will find loads of information, resources and others to connect with too.