Every year in October there is a Global Read Aloud event. This is where people around the world read the same books and share ideas and activities with other classrooms. It is a great way to make global connections. This is the second year that Level Cross Elementary participated. Knowing that students are more engaged when they have an authentic audience to share with I created a Google Doc and shared it with others in the Global Read Aloud Community and on Twitter. I decided to try to make the activities as hands on and interactive as possible for the students.
This week we have been busy making connection with students around the country. We read Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo and discussed what it means to be brave. Wanting to share our ideas with others we added our thoughts to a padlet.
We also wrote letters to and tweeted with students around the globe to tell them about our town and school. The students were excited when we received our first post card from Calvin Coolridge Elementary in Massachusetts. We are eagerly waiting for more postcards from our new friends.
I also created a Global City Google Presentation for students and teachers to share their "city creations" with us. We had classes from as far away as Canada share with us. Wanting to make our last day of Nana in the City special I decided to do a K-5 project and have the students build a city. We started with our 5th graders researching City Planning on Wonderopolis and becoming City Planners, Engineers, Parks/Recreational Planners, Architects, and Department of Transportation workers. They designed and built the framework for the younger students to add to our city.
As each class entered the media center I gave them the schematics that the 5th graders came up with and then they became builders and landscapers. They built with Legos,cereal boxes, toilet paper/paper towels holders, and construction paper. During each 45 minute session our town grew bigger and bigger until it was finally 4th grades time to draw the road for our Ozobots to travel down.
Today the theme of the media center was design thinking. They had a task to accomplish and they used ingenuity and problem solving to create the perfect city for our Ozobots to travel through. I am so proud of our students hard work and great attitude. It was a great way to conclude our week with Nana in the City by Lauren Castillo. Next week we will be reading The Troublemaker by Lauren Castillo.
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