My First Mystery Skype - Review and Resources

This week I tried a Mystery Skype for the first time with at 2nd grade class.They have a serious amount of mapping skills in their standards...and the teacher asked for a tech project tie in. I first wrote about Mystery Skype in this post.

In preparation for the activity I had my super nice boss order these place mat maps on Amazon (we ordered 12 based on a class size of 24 so that students could pair up).

This was a two day lesson (the class has a 40 minute Social Studies block and I took two days of it). The first day was reviewing what the class had learned and then (focusing solely on the United States) we taught them the four regions of the U.S. (NW, SW, NE, SE). We had them draw it out multiple times on their map. Once we did that we played a mystery state game. I left the classroom and the students came up with a state I had to guess when I came back in. This was done so that I could model questions a couple of times (crossing out states that I had projected on the interactive white board - Promethean for us). Then I flipped it so the kids had to guess my state a couple of times.

Some of the questions:

- Does your state border Canada?
- Does your state border an ocean?
- Does your state border Mexico?
- Is your state in the South East region?

The second day I had arranged for my mom to Skype in and and they had to ask her questions to find out where she lived (Utah). They did a really good job with the questions and crossing out the states on their map (and they got it).

The students really enjoyed it, and my mom did a great job with the kids.

Next time I would choose another class, that way the students can ask questions back and forth.

Comments

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Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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