It’s the fourth day of Read Around the Planet. Classes are still working hard on their presentations and asking great questions of their partners. Here are a few highlights of today:

Interaction

Today we had some great examples of how to get the other class involved in the presentation. It’s nice to see classes move beyond the simple two presentation format, and build in more interaction.

• One school had skits of fairy tales: the partner school had to guess which fairy tale the skit was based on.
• Another school shared information about famous people, followed by a quiz question on what was just presented.
• Another school had a graph of their favorite Dr. Seuss books, and they asked our students questions about the graph.

Community Pictures

Many of the classes are sharing great maps and visuals about their community. Here are some pictures shared from E. P. Clarke Elementary in St. Joseph, MI.

Waiting…

Today I had my first connection that took 20 minutes to solve the technical problem. While the class was waiting, I put on my hat to show the students. I showed them our snow out the window also. The students waited so patiently, and the interaction ended up being a great experience.

Hope your RAP connections continue to go well! Feel free to comment if you have additional insights!

Read Around the Planet continues with some amazing connections, and great prep work by students and teachers alike! Here are some more highlights:

Backgrounds

Usually I see the amazing backdrops or sets in the MysteryQuest sessions. But one of my schools is going all out for Read Around the Planet this year. It’s their first year, but the school has a Jazz grad, and a PICC grad, so they are well trained. Several of the classes are doing similar presentations, so they have the visuals incorporated into their back drop. Check it out:

Doesn’t that look sharp?! What tips do you have for visuals?

Encouraging Teachers

I have realized again that a very important role of the VC coordinator is the encourager for the teacher. Teachers doing a videoconference for the first time tend to be anxious about it. You can:

• Listen to their great ideas for their presentation
• Help them with visuals & testing the document camera / computer set up
• Reassure them when they haven’t heard from their partner teacher (if the test call happened; they are planning on it!)
• Let them know their preparation plans are great and that it will be a great learning experience

Rescheduling Etiquette

One of the fun challenges of Read Around the Planet is rescheduling. Snow days have knocked out quite a few connections this year, as well as the usual family illness, jury duty, etc. Here are some tips on rescheduling:

• Give the Reason: When you need to request a rescheduling, be sure to tell the reason why you need to reschedule.  People are pretty frustrated about rescheduling if you don’t give a reason. However, if you have a legitimate reason like illness or a death in the family or jury duty, etc. then they are generally happy to accommodate you.
• Be Specific: When emailing to reschedule, be really specific to speed the process. Tell all the dates and times that you can do within the next 3-4 weeks. Then they can pick a date from that list & you’re done!
• CC everyone involved: Be sure to CC teachers, school VC coordinators, and any regional service staff involved in the connect so everyone knows what is happening. Use the Reply to All feature of your email program!

Double Classes

Sometimes your partner teacher might cancel on you. Frustrating for sure, but what can you do? This morning, one of our partner classes had two classes in the videoconference. They graciously explained the situation to us, and my teacher was totally fine with it. This way all three classes were able to participate in their RAP connection. If you do this, be sure to explain to the partner class so they aren’t stressed or anxious about the large number of students they see on their screen!

Your Turn

How are your Read Around the Planet connections going? Running into any issues? How are you solving them?

Today is the first day of Read Around the Planet 2010! We have 70 classes participating. The total project participants is 1950 this year! The next couple weeks, I’ll be sharing some of highlights from each day.

Rescheduling

We started the day by putting four of our ten videoconferences today in the reschedule pile. Snow days knocked out 3 of the connections, and family illness made another one necessary to reschedule. One of the four is already rescheduled. We still want to meet with our partners!

Snapshots of Sharing

In a third grade connection this morning, the teachers began by comparing today’s weather. It’s always fun to compare weather when we are loaded up with snow and it’s 70 degrees in Texas.

Both classes shared a state ABC book, which fits nicely into the communities and regions curriculum for both classes.

• Texas: A is for the Alamo; B is for bluebonnet, the state flower; C is for Davy Crockett…
• Michigan: A is for apple blossom, the state flower; B is for blue trout; C is for capital of Michigan: Lansing…

The Q&A part is always fun:

• TX asked our kids: Do you go outside at recess? Only if it’s above 10. In TX, they don’t go outside if it’s below 30.
• MI Q: What makes your community unique? A: Everybody knows everybody.

This pair of teachers had prepared questions and sent them to each other ahead of time. Students at both sides read questions and answers ahead of time, and even prepared some visuals to go with the answers.

In another connection today, we were also matched with a class in Texas. Our class shared pictures of putting on snow pants and coats to go outside to play in the snow; and then pictures of playing outside in the snow – on the swings, on the slide, and making snow angels.

Sometimes interruptions happen. During our 1st grade connection, one of our students lost a tooth! Our teacher apologized for the disruption and the classes kept right on going.

In that same connection, teachers had split up the lines of Green Eggs and Ham and traded off reading the lines back and forth in a choral reading format. Great interaction and involvement on both sides.

Favorite RAP Tweets

I’ve also been following the tweets about RAP2010 this year. You can follow the #RAP2010 hash tag, or check the twitter fountain. Here are some of my favorites from today:

• Hairynomas: Just overheard our schools teachers setting up a Pen Pals collaboration between their classes. Gotta Lov RAP! #RAP2010
• Hairynomas: Another RAP Pen Pal match between classes. The RAP project is like the cupid arrow of collaborations this year. #RAP2010
• CherylTice: i’m in my office all day and have lots of books, so if there’s a class that needs a #RAP2010 partner & no one else can, i will do it 🙂
• LColwill: Watching Q & A. Students from VA just asked if we ride horses to school? LOL! #RAP2010

It’s going to be a fun two weeks. Read Around the Planet weeks are my favorite time of year. It’s awesome to listen to all the great learning and sharing that happens in all the connections!

Still continuing our Read Around the Planet connections this week. Today two classes from River Valley Middle School are connecting to South Carolina and Virginia. The 8th grade students have been studying the book Anne Frank. Recently they did the Anne Frank program with the Center for Puppetry Arts.

Based on that inspiration, they shared two shadow puppet plays that the students wrote. The play came across really well in the videoconference. In addition, a couple of groups also shared their rap written about Anne Frank. Our partner class really enjoyed the puppet shows.

Still another 23 Read Around the Planet connections to go!

After the first week of so many Read Around the Planet connections along with other VCs, I finally was able to actually watch a full session today. We have 63 RAP sessions this year.

Today’s session was an ESL Read Around the Planet. We started by our 7 students saying their name and hello in their native language (Spanish and Korean). Then our friends in TX also said their names.

Our friends in Texas shared a song with us. Then our students taught the kids in Texas the alphabet using ZooPhonics with actions. Our class sang about the animals that live at the zoo.

Our friends in Texas shared the beginning of a book about an animal in the zoo. Then they shared a song about colors, with each student representing different colors.

Some of the questions the students asked each other were:

• What is your favorite food?
• What is your favorite book?
• What is your favorite toy?
• What kind of weather is it there?
• Why aren’t you wearing blue? (one class had uniforms and the other class didn’t)

The students enjoyed a great conversation and learned about each other. Reminds me why I love this project!