Tag Archives: MysteryQuests

Snippets from MysteryQuest USA

I’ve been running a bunch of MysteryQuest USA sessions in the last couple weeks, and more coming. Here are a few snippets from what’s been happening so far.

Intros
After the introductions in the session today, the first class was unmuted for a bit before they started their presentation. I heard a student ask, “Are we going to see her?” I laughed and said, “I know you don’t want to see me; I’ll be muting my video.” That’s why I like to control the bridge at the same time I’m running a MysteryQuest. I can “hide” when I want to. And now I know the kids want me to hide too! 🙂 It was pretty funny. I could see the student who said it squirm in her seat as I chuckled about it.

Presentations


This screen shot is from a presentation that was organized around the game, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Very fun!


News shows are always fun, especially when complemented by visuals to review the clues. This class, from Western Hills, El Paso, did a news show. In this shot, the announcer is in a helicopter!!! How cool is that?!


This is an example from New York State of a background that gives clues at the same time as providing a set for a new show.

Clarifying Questions
In the clarifying questions section, we’ve had some interesting questions. I think my favorite so far this year was, “Is your city colorful?” The class wasn’t sure, so they said “no.” But we all still wonder what city they had in mind!

Sharing Guesses

This clue is on the document camera and is a great example of sharing a guess. This class did well because they had time to make and print these before we shared guesses!

As usual, MysteryQuest USA is a lot of fun and full of engaging learning experiences!

Pics from the MysteryQuest Classroom

If you aren’t subscribed to the comments on my blog, then you should check out the MysteryQuest USA pictures posted online by Pine River Elementary. They give a great flavor of what the research portion is like in the classroom.

I especially like the picture of this strategy of having a wall or whiteboard or place to write the guesses for all the schools. It gives a focal point to the research. See how the students are working there:

I still have a few spots left I want to fill. If you can’t pay the $50 for the remaining slots, sign up and put “free for blog readers” in the notes field when you register. Hope you can participate!

Holding Posters Still

First session of MysteryQuest USA today! We had a lot of posters in the presentations today, so I thought I’d share some of what worked and what we worked on improving even during the conference!

A couple of the classes were holding posters. As you can see, once they held it still, it came through very clearly. Notice the nice large font, and in the population case, the really thick marker with the important info to write down.

Another class used a document camera. They modeled the best practice of stacking the papers and then pulling them off one by one. It came through so clear that I wasn’t able to grab a screenshot of pulling it off. But this gives you the idea:

Another class taped their posted to the chalkboard. As you can see that definitely held it still. A little hard to read in this picture, but from what I could tell, all the classes could read it.

Then one of my favorite clues from today was this clue for a very small state. Takes a bit of math to figure this one out. Great work, St. Thomas Aquinas, in Waterford, WI!

Finally, one of the classes did so well on research time that they had time to make posters to ask their clarifying questions! I have never seen this before and it worked out really well. They had several questions that made the other class look it up, and it was easier to do with the question written out!

We have a few spots left in the MysteryQuest USA sessions in mid-May. Still time to sign up and participate. Hope you can join us!

MysteryQuest Europe Notes

Today I am running the last MysteryQuest World for this school year. We’re focusing on Europe and have 3 classes from TX, one from OH and one from MI.

After a rough start with technical difficulties for three of the schools, we got right into the presentations. Several of the schools were participating for their first time. The most unique presentation today was from Mata Intermediate in Alief, TX.  They used an investigative interview format. A student was investigating the disappearance of a person who had committed a crime. Each MysteryQuestperson who was interviewed (wife, mother in law, father in law etc) shared the clues. Then they showed a poster. While we looked at poster, the interviewer repeated the clues again. “So you said, ….” and this gave the students a way to hear the clues again and get them written down.  This format worked really well and was quite funny to watch. The student interviewing had a fancy hat and pipe and acted very aggressive. It was a very entertaining presentation.

In the clarifying questions section today we had some interesting questions:

  • Does ya’lls city start with an e? I can tell we have a group of TX schools this time! 🙂
  • Is the city known as the city of a 1000 windows? These are the kinds of clarifying questions I really like!

Great job to all the classes that participated this year. Stay tuned for news from MysteryQuest USA coming up in April and May!

MysteryQuest Miracle

I’ve been flat on my back sick all week, but on Tuesday we had a small miracle.

I had a MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere session scheduled with 5 classes, and I was too sick to crawl out of bed, let alone facilitate. All weekend prior, I had wracked my brain trying to think of what to do. I can’t bear to cancel a MysteryQuest because they are almost impossible to reschedule.

Then it hit me, all the teachers had done MQ before! They could just dial in and run it themselves.

I know, whoever heard of that? Five rowdy middle school classrooms on a multipoint with no facilitator?

But, they did it! Four amazing teachers and one great MysteryQuest. I am so proud of these teachers:

  • Classroom A Teacher: Annette Rozycki, O.W. Best Middle School, Dearborn, MI
  • Classroom B Teacher: Debbie Fucoloro, St. Clement School, Archdiocese of St. Louis, Des Peres, MO
  • Classroom C Teacher: Jeff Gaynor, Ann Arbor, MI
  • Classroom D Teacher: Laura Ponsart, Gilles-Sweet, Fairview Park City Schools, Fairview Park, Ohio
  • Classroom E Teacher: Jeff Gaynor, Ann Arbor, MI

And afterwards, they all emailed each other sharing congratulations on a  job well done. Thank you, teachers & techs, for making another great experience possible so we wouldn’t have to disappoint students by canceling the session!

What is the Western Hemisphere?

Have you ever noticed how videoconferencing expands your thinking? How you learn new things every day, even if you’re just hooking up classes to the next place and making sure the connection works?

This week I realized even this even more. I noticed how VCing makes you more aware of how other people define things differently than you might…

We’ve been running MysteryQuest World Geography since 2002. One of the areas of the world we focus on is the Western Hemisphere. I’ve always thought of it as my local teachers do also – that it’s basically North, Central, and South America. Which is also how our textbooks and curriculum seem to define it.

But when the second Canadian teacher submitted the country for Western Hemisphere that wasn’t in one of those areas, I decided I’d better learn some more. So I asked Google and found this from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The Western Hemisphere, also Western hemisphere[1] or western hemisphere,[2] is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies westPrime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich in London, England, United Kingdom) and east of the International Date Line.[3] It is also used, mainly by Americans, to specifically refer to the Americas (or the New World) and adjacent waters, while excluding other territories that lie geographically in the hemisphere (parts of Africa, Europe, Antarctica, and Asia). Thus this is sometimes referred to as the of the American hemisphere, despite the fact that it is by no means a hemisphere.[4]

Sizzle. Pop. Can’t you just hear my understanding expanding? 🙂 Ah, the beauty of videoconferencing!

Point-to-Point MysteryQuests

08-02-21mq.jpgThis week I’ve been facilitating three Point-to-Point MysteryQuests for Reed Middle School in Bridgman, MI. They connected to MO, NJ, and CA. It’s our first time running MysteryQuests in just an hour with just one other school. The time frame better fits the traditional middle school schedule and makes it easier for the teachers to schedule and participate. We did one each day so that they weren’t scheduled back to back.

The schedule is generally as follows – with some flexibility depending on how everything works out:

  • 5 min. Introductions & background info about each of the schools
  • 15 min. Presentations from both schools
  • 15 min. Research with NO computers
  • 5 min. Research with computers
  • 5 min. Clarifying questions
  • 5 min. Reconsider answers and more research (computers allowed)
  • 10 min. Sharing guesses, correct answers, and some time to ask each other questions.

The teacher and I discussed the computers issue and decided to not allow computers during the first research portion. The hard thing about a decision like this is the varied difficulty level presented by the other classes. One of the class presentations was so hard that we didn’t get it at all. The other one we were able to get even after losing 20 minutes to technical difficulties. It seems to be an issue to play by ear. In the session with the hard presentation, we allowed the students to use computers sooner.

If you’re familiar with the MysteryQuest format, you’ll notice that one difference here is the amount of research time. In a traditional multipoint MysteryQuest format, students have 30-40 minutes to research. Of course in that format they are research 4-5 other presentations. In this case, the whole class is researching the one presentation. In theory it should go faster. But we did find this week that each time when the 20 minutes were up the classes wanted more time.

The classes seemed to be mostly involved as usual. I did notice some “behavior” in front of the camera towards the end of the research times. With just one presentation to research, it’s harder to get all the students involved in the research. Easier to lose some who are prone to get distracted anyways. However, it seems to me that the lack of scheduling headaches seems to outweigh this disadvantage to the shortened format.

In the connections where we didn’t have technical difficulties, we were able to spend more time letting the students ask each other questions.

My sense is also that if a teacher does this a couple times, they’d be able to do a point to point MysteryQuest without a facilitator. I would like to get to that point so that we can increase the number of these sessions. There’s only so many sessions a person can facilitate!

I look forward to additional feedback from my teacher. We’re doing another point-to-point one in March with a different teacher, so we’ll see how that one goes too. Overall though, I’m pleased with this adaptation of the program to make it easier for our middle school classes to participate.

Creative News Shows

Running another MysteryQuest Western Hemisphere today. One of my favorite formats for presentations is news shows. You can see some examples in the MysteryQuest video.

Today’s most entertaining presentation was from O.W. Best Middle School in Dearborn, MI. They had a news show with all kinds of interesting facts and lines while giving their clues.

One funny clue started with, “From the Institute of Boring Information, the nearest body of water is…”

The one that really caught my attention was, “Police are tracking a tourist named Ms. Janine Lim who is suspected of hijacking a boat.” That really perked up my ears. Thankfully, later in the broadcast, the student news show reported, “All charges have been dropped for Janine Lim. It was discovered that she actually owns the boat.”

Very creative, O.W.Best! You made me laugh after a morning of too many technical problems! 🙂 I wish I really did own that boat. See you in the next MysteryQuest in March!

There are still a couple openings in MysteryQuest World in March. Let me know if you want in but are struggling with funding. Also, I’m beginning to get dates together for MysteryQuest USA in April. In a week or so those should be ready for registration as well.

MysteryQuest Africa

First MysteryQuest World Geography of the year today. (I still have openings in the March sessions!)

MysteryQuest sessions are really fun to do because the students are so engaged and earnest about their work and learning. My favorite presentation today came from Bell Academy, NY, one of Andrea Israeli’s schools. The students had woven their clues into a mystery story about a special magical object. They even showed it – it looked like a beautiful silver teapot. I was too slow to grab a picture of it, but you can imagine.

At the end, when they revealed the answer of Morocco, we got to meet at student from Morocco and the city that they presented. She shared some information about the what life is like there. What a treat for our students!

We finished early because we lost two schools to snow days and other complications. So we spent some time asking questions at the end. A new question this year was, “What’s the price of gas?” We also had some lively rivalry about football and baseball teams.

Consider participating this year! Kids love MysteryQuest and they get deeply involved in their study of the region and motivated by the competition.