Today, we Skyped with Mrs. Watson's class in British Columbia! They are our blogging buddies in Canada. We first met each other when we were members of the Our World, Our Stories global project last October.
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| Geographers, Kelly and Sarah, locate and point to Solintula, British Columbia. |
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| Canada's Minister of Education was a guest in Mrs. Watson's room, and we thought he must work in the national capital of Canada which is Ottawa. |
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We opened the call with our American greeters.
 Our Canadian greeters were so professional! For fun, we each sang our verse from the Our World, Our Stories culminating song. Here is the original sing along! |
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Even thought we had some technical problems with Skype, the two classes persevered and were able to learn a lot about our two countries.
~AREA~
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Mia shared that America has 3,794,101 square miles, while
Sophie informed us that Canada measures 3, 855,100 square miles.
Very close, but how
much larger is Canada's area? Is Canada the largest country in the world?
~POPULATION~
There are a lot of Americans! Trey stated that there are approximately 313,000,000 people in the U.S. According to Karin, there are 34,108,752 Canadians!
Not very close! How many more Americans are there than Canadians?
~NATIONAL BORDERS~
Parsa informed our Canadian friends that America is divided up into 50 states.
Quang shared that Canada is divided up too, but their divisions are not called states. Canada has TEN provinces and THREE territories.
~FLAGS~
Leila drew the flag and discussed what the symbols on the American flag stand for.
Ana shared that Canada's colors/colours are red and white and the national emblem is the maple leaf.
~NATIONAL ANIMALS~
The bald eagle is America's national bird. The female is larger and the wingspan is enormous! Madison used two yard sticks (similar to two meter sticks) to demonstrate the wingspan!
Canada's national animals are the industrious beaver and the Canadian horse. Kennedy said that the horse was just added in 2002.
~FUN FACTS~
It is interesting that the highest and lowest points in North America are in the United States. Matthew and Aidan put these facts together.
Although Death Valley doesn't sound inviting, it is quite beautiful!
Canadian fun fact: Canadians eat more Mac and Cheese than any other country on Earth!
We loved this fact! However, considering America's enormous population and love of Mac and Cheese, we find this fact hard to believe!
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| Thank you, Royce, for being our class photographer! |
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What did you think of the Skype call?
Do you have any questions for the Canadians?
Please share your opinion with the Minister of Education, Mr. Abbott. Why you think blogging is important?
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What a lot of interesting facts you shared between classes! Was there a time difference when you skyped? That is our biggest challenge when skyping with other classrooms, although my class are keen to camp out in the classroom so that they can do some late night skyping with their friends on the other side of the world! Perhaps that will be our next adventure.
ReplyDeleteI love the way you managed to involve your whole class in the Skype call. Did you work out how far apart your two classrooms are?
Mrs M & Class 2
A Room with a View
Dear Mrs. Yollis and class,
ReplyDeleteWhat an exciting day you had skyping with your Canadian friends and getting a chance to meet and talk to the Minister of Education for Canada! School sure has changed a lot since I attended school! I think that what you learn out of a book and from your teacher is incredibly important- but I also believe that the type of learning you get through experiences like blogging and skyping are amazing and unlike any other. It was so nice to have lunch together yesterday and learn some facts about Canada that I never knew before and that I wouldn't have had a chance to learn had it not been for your skyping with them the other day. I'm very impressed with this "out of the box" learning opportunity and feel very thankful for this well-rounded education you are receiving.
Best,
Dana (Sammy's mom)
This blog was very interesting and I learned a lot about the similarities and differences between USA and Canada. I was most interested to see how many more people are in the USA as compared to Canada even though the size of the two countries are almost the same.
ReplyDeleteI would like to know what you found most intereesting about the class from Canada as compared to your class in California?
Keep blogging....
Dear friend,
DeleteWe were also surprised on how many people there were in U.S.A compared to the Canadians when the Canadians have a bigger country than us. To us, the most interesting fact about Canada is that the Canadians eat more mac 'n cheese then any country in the world.
Sincerely,
♥ Acacia and Matthew⚔