Request for classroom collaborations during the 2009/10 school year:

[Nerine Chalmers]

I am writing from Qatar Academy Primary School, Doha, Qatar in order to invite classrooms from around the world to join with our Grade 4 classes in a long term, but fairly low key collaboration. We are a PYP school, and our Grade 4s are 9 – 10 year olds. There are approximately 22 students in each class. What we have in mind is that each of our 5 Grade 4 classrooms will link up with a different classroom, preferably in different continents. We would be asking the students in the partner class to communicate with our students in a variety of ways – possibilities would be by email, voice thread, Skype, a discussion page on a wiki – among others. We would be anticipating some contact every month or six weeks through the school year. Examples of the activities we have in mind are sharing ideas on some pieces of work, survey responses, sharing of relevant photographs of their local area, culminating in participating in a collaborative writing project in April/May 2010.
The school website can be found at http://www.qataracademy.edu.qa/
You can also have a look at the Grade 4 wiki space at http://grade4.qataracademy.wikispaces.net/

[Nerine Chalmers]

Thanks, Leslee - our year only begins at the end of September, so I'm afraid it's going to be a while before we get it up and running, but I will come back to you once I have spoken to the teachers. Hope you have a good start to the year.

[Mary Freeman]

Hi Leslee,
I teach 5th grade in North Carolina and am planning to collaborate in some way with Nerine's students when they start school.
In the meantime, I have joined Matthew Stark's Global Collaboration project and would love to have you join if you're interested. The 1st day for my students is 8/25 so we'll be ready to begin the project soon.
I think your name just jumped off the page to me because my daughter lives in Castle Rock, CO and I think it would be cool to have some friends in that part of the country.
Please let me know if you're interested. My email is [e-mail]

[Betsye Sargent]

Nerine:
Not sure If I ever answered this, but we would be interested in participating. Our school is very small, so couldn't be a match class to class, but we can be flexible and fit into any plan. Not sure age of child is most important. Let me know if you are interested.

[Nerine Chalmers]

Hi Betsye

I will not be able to confirm anything definitely until I meet with the teachers - and we only open at the end of September. However I very much hope that we will be able to set something up, and I will get back to you as soon as I know.

[Kelly]

I have a science/English teacher who also teaches 5th grade and is interested in collaborating this year as well. She teaches both 5th grade classes- so a total of 40students approximately.

We were discussing first instructing the students on email etiquette and then start the collaboration. We were considering doing a topic about environments? Perhaps sharing common environmental concerns in the area? But it could also be weather or just narratives explaining the local areas? I am interested and would like to get an informal time-line up and going. I understand that the teachers do not return to end of September- do you think it would be possible to get something organized to start in January? This would allow us to instruct the students on specific skills??? I can start earlier but not sure if you all would be able to?

BTW- We are an independent school in London UK. We have a mix of students from all over the world. I am the technology integration specialist.
Keep me posted!

[Nerine Chalmers]

Hi Kelly
This sounds very interesting, and I will be in touch once the teachers are back. I had a look at your website, and wondered which campus you are on, and whether you follow PYP and MYP? I was staying in Cobham in 2007, and visited ACS - what an amazing school!

[Kelly]

Thanks Nerine,
I work at Hillingdon. We are going for our authorization of MYP in April, so we are in full swing!
Look forward to connecting with you, on any level!
Kelly

[Jessica Demegillo]

how can we join? thanks

[Nerine Chalmers]

Hi Jessica
As soon as school opens at the end of this month, I will be talking to the teachers, and getting back to you with more detail. It will be great for our students to have contact with someone from the Philippines. I would love to know more about your school, and your students.

[Nerine Chalmers]

Hi

I hope this message will reach all those who responded to my original request for collaboration with our Grade 4 classes. The team leader of the Grade 4 classes asked me to pass on the following message:

"Thank you to everyone who responded over the summer to our request for schools to collaborate with. My sincere apologies that it has taken this long to get back to you. Due to a late start date this year plus the postponement of our term beginning, due to concerns over H1N1, we have only just got back to school! I have talked to the Grade 4 team here at Qatar Academy and we have come up with some ideas for what we would like to do this year. Please have a look and see if you think you could work with us.
We have 5 classes in Grade 4 so are looking for Grade 3,4 or 5 classes, ideally one from each continent, to buddy up with.
Classes of around 22 students who have regular access to the internet would be great.
Our students will be working with wikis so, for us, this would be a good tool for collaboration.
We would like to start small, maybe working on sharing information about our respective schools and countries, putting out a question of the week and sharing answers. We would then hope to move onto some collaborative writing, data collection for maths and work relating to our units of inquiry which are basically to do with advertising, rocks and minerals, exploration, culture and language, water and pollution and simple machines.
I hope people are still interested and we can find some classes willing to work with us!"