#50statechallenge

We did it! We #mysteryskype with classrooms in all 50 states! (I had a hard time tracking down LA, WV, and NM and we did two classrooms in Alaska for Alaska Day: http://arctic3.blogspot.com/2016/10/happy-alaska-day.html and we did a couple States a couple times because of all the requests we got such as: Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky, California...)



Here are some screen shots of Skypes #42-50

Skype 42 was with Hawaii! They taught us how to say the colors in Hawaiian! They also made a youtube video of our encounter! http://youtu.be/H_LTHFrVCHE

Skype 49 was in NM. They taught us how to count to 10 in Spanish.

Class in South Dakota

This class in South Carolina had a uniform, but they could between pick red, white, or blue versions!

My students were so excited they "beat" the High Schoolers in Wyoming!

Showing our almost complete skype map to the Class in Arizona

Skype 47 in Montana had no sound because their mic was broken, so we got a cool typed transcript!

Skype 48 in Louisiana had video blocked at their school, so we typed questions back & forth

Just an amazing project!

I had tried to hide our state map as we got down to the last 10 states, but the students had it memorized.

By Skype 50, they already knew who it was... But, they planned out questions to still make it fair. 

It is just incredible to think about that our little class in our Arctic shared Alaska facts to over 50 classrooms (We did a couple states twice and a couple overseas locations) 

Its amazing that so many classrooms have now heard of: Fort Yukon. "A village of 600 people. Accessible only by boat and plane. No roads" 

The number 1 question we were asked: Do you live in igloos? "We dont live in igloos. That' further North" 

 Classes in the Southern States thought it our low temperature was incredible. We got to show several classes the snow outside our classroom.

 The students counted to 10 in Gwich'in and shared the colors and some words like "Nenahalia" to the classes we talked with. I really saw their pride shine as the year went on :) Language wasn't just something that they did in language class, it was something unique to them :)

Gwich'in Culture Week

Our last week of school is Culture Week, where community members take over the school and teach the students traditional skills such as music, native games, storytelling, jigging, cooking, and beading/sewing.

We haven't had formal music education all year, so it was a BLAST learning to play fiddle. I got to learn too! (Learn more about our music teachers: http://dancingwiththespirit.org/news_Nov_15.html)

The students had fun learning Indian Leg Wrestling and no one got hurt!

Lots and lots of jigging!

 Learned to cook fry bread, salmon nuggets, and muskrat!

Sewing some wall hangings!

Day 2: Learning Guitar and how to sing some songs in Gwichin

The one-legged high kick

Storytelling with an elder. We heard about Visagizak and the ducks.

Cooking on the grill outside.

#CincoDeMayo2017

The students have been curious what Cinco De Mayo is since I put it on our May Calendar. I explained it was a Mexican Celebration over the French Army that has become more of a pop-culture celebration. They had never experience it before. 

We started making Pinatas on monday using leftover scholastic forms. This morning, I did an activity with Spanish Numbers "Hey, Uno like the game uno? That means one?"

I had a playlist of Spanish music including the chicken dance, Mexican Hat song, and La Cucaracha. Even my student who doesn't normally likes music, got into the spirit. I love how music changes the mood. 

I think no matter your age and where you live: Pinatas are just fun! So glad I got to share this tradition with them. 

#ScienceFair #STEM

What a unique bunch of projects: Are mammals reptiles cousins? I have to say, I did not understand this project at first but the student was super excited about it. It turned out to be a research project and he was able to follow the scientific method. 

Do plants grow better with water, salt water, pop, or juice? I think these girls were inspired by the project I did when I was in school. They set up the experiment and they did a beautiful graph. 

Where does glue dry faster: desk, pencil, or paper? 
Their original hypothesis was that it would dry on the pencil faster because you hold a pencil and it warms it up so it would dry faster. We did find out glue takes almost 6 hours to dry.

Why does an apple taste like an onion?  This student literally had 3 different projects started, so she went through the scientific method 3 times before sticking with this one. Eat an apple, smell an onion, what do you taste? I loved that she reasoned that you would taste onion because when you plug your nose, you dont taste stuff.

 What angle works to make a basket? This was another project I was doubtful of, but the student was so excited about it. She loves basketball and I introduced angles briefly when we were studying quadrilaterals. She used a basketball shooting game's first level to calculate what angle worked to make a basket. She did this by taping a protractor to the computer. When the judge asked her why she thought to tape the protractor to the computer, she answered "because my arm would get tired"

As 3rd Graders, they are in the same prize category as the 3-6th graders. The judges were super impressed with what they saw. :) 

Loved this drying meat project: beef, caribou, and moose. Love his conclusion: need more MEAT!

Dzih is Pitch-Gum. They did a comparison study of different types of gum. 

Connecting the Arctic to the Amazon

For Earth Day, we connected with a photographer who went to a very rural village in the Amazon. 

He had to fly into Brazil and then take a 4-day boat ride. The people there did not have electricity nor any modern conveniences. They are subsiding off the land as they have for hundreds of years. 

They saw kids their own age canoeing & fishing for pirahna and hunting monkeys. 

"If you use poison  darts to kill the monkey, how can you eat the meat?"

"How do you put the poison darts in the blow gun if you can't touch it?"

"Why do they go outside if they just get bit by mosquitos all the time?"

I think they surprised the researcher with the different subsistence questions that they were asking. It is amazing how many similarities the Arctic & Amazon can have. 

Caterpillars in the Arctic

We didn't get our hamster due to logistics, so instead I got ordered some caterpillars so we could observe them go through their lifecycle. Its something that I have done every year and I'm amazed how excited these 3rd Graders are. I suppose if you have never seen it before, its doubly exciting. That's one thing that I've loved about teaching in super rural areas, a lot of things are new and exciting still.

One of my students thought up this joke and made a little meme with them:

Caterpillar 1: "What are you doing?"
Caterpillar 2: "Just hanging around"

Sunflowers in the Arctic

The temperature shot up from 0 to 57, our sunflowers got thirsty! 

They grow fast! They will need to be transplanted soon. I've been sending picture updates to the class in Kansas that sent us the seeeds. Really amazing project to connect our classrooms :)