Thursday morning all the students, Mrs Booth and Principal, Mrs Cavanagh, arrived at our school before 7am. It was so early for Mrs Booth that she drove past the Bonville highway turnoff and had a mini panic attack thinking “please let there be another turn-off soon!” Luckily there was and she was able to get to the school in time to organise our mystery Skype call. All the students knew what their special roles were and had set the classroom up the previous day in readiness for the call. What the students didn’t know was where the other class was calling from. One of the students remarked “I bet it is Bonville School!” Mmmm…actually it was a bit further away than that…all the way to Mrs Deyamport’s class (Thames Elementary School) in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA!
The opening question from Mrs Deyamport’s class was “do you live south of the equator?” Well, that woke our sleepy students up as they could only answer the questions with either yes or no. You can see some of our questions on the presentation below and read a draft recount from one of the students. As there was a 17 hour time difference our call was cut short because the students from Thames Elementary School needed to catch the bus home. When we called them it was 2pm Wednesday afternoon and we were in the future being 7am Thursday morning 🙂 The students loved the experience and both Mrs Booth and Mrs Cavanagh agreed that this was a brilliant geography lesson and hopefully we can organise another one. We finished up with an adaptation of a Mississippi breakfast which involved corn, eggs, bread rolls, sausage rolls and juice. We are going to send a package of Australian goodies from our school to our new Mississippi friends too.
Did you know that this call nearly didn’t happen as a big tornado ripped through Hattiesburg a few weeks earlier and destroyed many buildings and all the school buses. Even when Mrs Booth and Mrs Deyamport were test Skyping each other last week it was flooding near Crossmaglen School and Mrs Deyamport had another storm brewing. An hour later Crossmaglen students and staff had to evacuate and close the school. Wow, wild weather all across the globe.
What a great morning! It really was worth coming in to school at such an early time. Everybody worked so well together to guess the country, then state and finally the town. Even with the little hiccups of the skype call it was wonderful. I loved the way everyone thought about the answers given by the other students and debated where the town was. It was great to be a part of it. Well done everyone!