Mr. Mannell, a retired teacher from New South Wales, Australia is a wonderfully supportive member of our online learning community. He regularly comments on our classroom blog, and we love learning with him!
Here is just one of the numerous comments we've received. This one was from our Tremendous Two Week Tessellation. He always add new information to our posts, and we appreciate his contributions.
Mrs. Yollis contacted Mr. Mannell so we could personally thank him for helping us learn. We discovered that we were the first class Mr. Mannell has ever Skyped with! Exciting!
Before the call, we organized the questions we had for Mr. Mannell by category:
teaching, blogging, free-time, and Australia
The rest of this post was written by: Alexandra, Trey, Brenden, and Alyssa.
Here is Sarah's first photo of the Skype call. Notice that Mr. Mannell has both flags, the Australian and the American flag.
It was exciting to learn that this was Mr. Mannell's first Skype call.
We felt proud.
Students were listening carefully to Mr. Mannell. We learned many facts about him. For example, we learned that in his teaching career he taught kindergarten through high school. We were surprised about the range that he taught. Mrs. Yollis has only taught elementary school.
Many students were asking questions about the rural school he used to teach at. One questions was, "What was the most uncommon animal that you had to chase off the school yard?" He said that the black snake was the most uncommon. Another question was, "What was the most common animal you had to chase?" He said that the Emu was the most common.
Acacia and Leila took notes in Word and Mrs. Yollis placed them in Google Docs. Here is a link.
Some students took notes on their white boards.
Sarah took a photo of the orange cubic pin on our blog bulletin board. Mr. Mannell lives in the state of New South Wales. (Notice, we have numerous blogging buddies in the southern hemisphere.)
The geographers, Alyssa and Brenden, found New South Wales in our big blue atlas.
Mr. Mannell lives in the southern part of New South Wales, Australia.
One of the things he likes about blogging is that he gets to be part of a class again. As you can see, he is definitely part of our class!
Mr. Mannell often adds to our learning through his blog called Extended Comments. You can leave him a comment without needing an email or joining anything! Check it out!
Thanks Sarah for the great photographs!
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Have you ever Skyped with anyone?
Do you have any other questions for Mr. Mannell?
Has Mr. Mannell ever taught you anything?