Global Read Aloud with 2nd Graders

We guessed your state!

What: Students connect with other classrooms through The Global Read-Aloud Project to share their responses to The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes.
 
Materials: 

• Skype
• Padlet
• Twitter
• Edmodo

Time: Ongoing for 2 months

Challenges: 

• Connecting with other classroom in real time can be tricky to schedule.  
• Some classes might be ahead of yours in the book so you may need to be careful about spoilers.
• Students need to be coached to respond to conversations with an acknowledgement rather than simply walking away from the camera.

Tips: 

• Students can prepare for Skype sessions by thinking of questions about the other classroom's location. Yes / No questions follow Mystery Skype rules.
• Students can respond to text with drawing or writing which can be posted to pallets or twitter.
• Make sure that students have permission to have their images shared with other schools.
• Stay current on the Edmodo teacher forum to connect with other classes.
• Create a central location to track contact info and scheduling of connections with other classes.
• Mystery YouTube with classrooms outside of your time zone.

Narrative:

Mrs. Boersma responded to an invitation to participate in a Global Read Aloud for The Year of Billy Miller since she reads this book any way with her students. At this point, I invited the other 2nd grade teachers if they wanted to connect with other classes around the country and world to discuss this book with other students. 

I began scheduling connections with other classes through the teacher forum on Edmodo. I created a blog to track our connections and keep us organized.