Twitter Chats in Primary

Today, I had the chance to participate in my first ever Twitter chat with my grade 3 students to celebrate the end of our class journey with the Global Read Aloud. We have been reading Fenway and Hattie with classes around the world for the last 6 weeks. Along with way, we have collaborated with some awesome teachers in the United States including Carol McLaughlin and Amanda Walker from Birmingham, Alabama. Carol suggested we have a student Twitter chat and we decided to invite the author Victoria J. Coe to join in the fun.

 

Skype Call before our Twitter Chat

To our delight, Victoria J. Coe was able to participate! Amanda also created a digital poster to share on Twitter and invite other classes around the world who also joined us. We used the hashtag #kidsGRAchat and Amanda agreed to moderate the chat and ask the 3 questions. As well, we met prior to the Twitter chat via Skype to introduce our classes. The Skype call gave us an opportunity to learn where our friends that we chatted with are from and we spoke about the distances between our classes and the weather. Then we left our Skype call and hopped on Twitter to start the chat. I prepared for the call by having my students complete the questions prior to the call via a Google Doc. I also explained to students how Twitter chats work and how I have found them a great way to learn how to do the things I’ve tried in the classroom with technology. On the day of the call I had them open up their files so they remembered what they wrote and I typed their responses into the Twitter chat. They were very excited to see their ideas on Tweetdeck but learn new ideas from students in the United States. We even had new classes join us for the chat, enriching our discussion. We also reviewed digital citizenship before the call, speaking about Skype Etiquette and how we should post things on social media that are positive and respectful. It was a wonderful learning experience for both myself and the students and something I will definitely participate in again. You can read our conversation below from Storify. Have you tried having Twitter chats with your students?