Student Feature - Global Read Aloud at Highfalls

For this week's Student Feature, I would like to showcase a middle school student from Highfalls in Robbins, NC.  Isaiah is a sixth grade student in Mrs. Sarah Holden’s class.  Isaiah’s class has been taking part in the Global Read Aloud and has connected with classrooms in Ecuador and Canada to collaborate about a book, The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm.  Below you can read Isaiah’s account of his experience during this collaborative opportunity.  Isaiah will be speaking about his experiences during this class project at the upcoming Board of Education meeting on November 10.

“My 6th grade class has been reading The 14th Goldfish as part of the Global Read Aloud.  We have connected with a 7th grade class from Ecuador in many different ways.  This has been an amazing experience for me.

Global Read Aloud is a way to take a book and use it to connect students with other students from around the world.  In doing this it helps us to interact with kids that we would have never met without this experience.  Through this we can learn about new cultures in ways that we have never done before.

During this experience, my class has connected in many different ways with a 7th grade class from Ecuador.  To begin with, we did a Mystery Skype with them.  We asked them questions and tried to figure out where they were from.  They also asked us questions.  After a few guesses they figured out that we were from North Carolina first.  Then we guessed a few different places, but we finally figured out that they were from Ecuador.   Then we connected with the same class on Edmodo.  We typed a little bit about ourselves and shared this with them and they did the same.  We were able to respond back to the students.  As a class, on Twitter, we answered questions about The 14th Goldfish and shared pictures about our experience.  Finally on Kidblog Mrs. Holden asked us different questions and we answered them.

Before we Skyped I was a little nervous because I never Skyped before.  But when we did it, it was a fun, interesting, and exciting experience.  It was fun to connect with people from another place in the world and to learn things about them .  It was cool that there was a girl in the class that was from North Carolina. My overall experience has been exciting because it is fun to connect with people from other places.  I can’t wait to see what we do next!”       - Isaiah, Highfalls Elementary 6th Grade