First day of Read Around the Planet. Snapshots of student learning and excitement make all the preparation work worth it!

Backgrounds and signs with the name of the school.

Students dressed up in orange and black, McKinley Elementary’s school colors.

Children smiling, laughing, waving, and cheering when meeting each other.

Throwing snowballs with a class in Texas. Loved that idea from last year!

Listening to fun songs.

“Roll, roll, roll the snow, roll it round and round. Make a great big snow ball, and lay it on the ground.” To the tune of Row Row Row Your Boat. Scroll down on this page for the full words.

And to the tune of London Bridges Falling Down: “The sun gives us light and heat, light and heat, light and heat, the sun gives us light and heat, we learned from NASA.” A song about a previous videoconference to NASA.

Cat in the Hat helping to make the connections work. On the phone fixing one connection, while waving at the kids waiting for their partner class. Playing copycat with actions.

A school in upstate New York sharing pictures of huge piles of snow.

Seeing a live class pet lizard.

Today we had 17 Read Around the Planet connections, plus a trip to COSI Toledo. I helped connect six of them. Three of them are being rescheduled due to sick teachers. The rest my new coordinators connected on their own. I’m so proud of them! Day 1 done. 61 more connections to go.