Mystery Skype & Persuasive Writing

My 4th graders participated in their very first Mystery Skype today with a 6th grade class in Missouri. Before we began the Skype I gave each table of 4 students a job. One group used the Almanac in their Social Studies book to look up some of the facts given by the other class, some used Google to research the facts, some students used laminated maps to identify the area of the US where they thought the state may be located, and a few students helped out by reading our facts to the other class. After the 6th grade class gave us their facts, they took a guess at where we were from and we did the same. We were both successful!
Some of their facts were:

Their state is near the Mississippi River
Their state was a swing state in the Election
The name of their state contains 8 letters
They are near Jefferson City

Then they surprised us by asking if we wanted to guess what city they were from in Missouri and they would do the same. We ended up being successful with that guess as well!

It was such a great opportunity and experience, and we are certainly looking forward to doing more Mystery Skypes in the near future. Here's a look at the 6th grade class we Skyped with today on our Promethean board.

This week in Reading students learned how to analyze and evaluate an informational text to identify evidence and opinions. They worked really hard analyzing the texts given on this Monday -Wednesday while discovering the different types of evidence used by the author to support their claim. They also had the opportunity to think about their own opinion in comparison to the author's and decide whether they agreed or disagreed with the author. They were also given thinking stems of I think...... and I would.... to elaborate on their explanation. Today they took their learning further by writing a persuasive letter to Santa using opinions and reasons stating why they deserve the presents they are asking for for Christmas. They also learned today while typing their paper on Microsoft Word how to add clipart.