Mystery Skype

One of our third grade classes took on a Mystery Skype challenge today. During Mystery Skype, we set up a Skype session with another class somewhere in the world. This time we connected with someone from the United States. As a class, we brainstormed questions that would help us narrow down our options until we could guess which state they were from. Some of our questions included:

• Are you east of the Mississippi River?
• Do you get snow?
• Is your state mostly flat? 
• Does your state start with a vowel?

Both classes continued to take turns asking questions back and forth until they could come up with a valid guess of the other's state. Each student in the class had a role to play. The Greeters introduced the class and got the Skype session going. Our Questioners used the class list of brainstormed questions to take turns asking the most specific questions on the list. The Trackers took notes of the other classes responses. The Mappers used atlases and printed maps to narrow down the states as we eliminated them using our critical thinking and geography skills. Our Google Mappers looked for landforms and physical features of the United States to suggest other questions for our Questioners to ask. Our Answerers were in charge of responding to the questions that were asked from the other class.

The other class guessed our state of Indiana one round earlier than us. We discovered they were from Oklahoma. They told us a little bit about their state. We learned they are an hour behind us, our temperatures today were only 3 degrees apart, and they have around 500 students in their school. They also were in third grade and their mascot was the Red Tornadoes.

You can learn more about Mystery Skype here.

We want to thank Mrs. Stephens Class for playing Mystery Skype with us today! It was a lot of fun! @Stephens_Class

Everyone tuned in and ready to go.

Questioners ask questions to the other class.

Answerers give correct responses to questions that were asked from the other class.

A sample Trackers sheet.

They guessed we were from Indiana!

Hour of Code

Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students joined students in over 180 countries while participating in the Hour of Code this week. Students used online tutorials to learn basic coding language with Blockly Blocks. They practiced coding using popular characters like Anna and Elsa from Frozen, Angry Birds, Minecraft, and Star Wars.

Want to learn code? Ask you teacher for your username and password or sign up at Code.org.

Can you beat our current record of 18 lines of code? Tweet us a screenshot of your record on Twitter @academy_ba.

Fifth Graders launched our Hour of Code Week!

Coding using Angry Birds

A fifth grade student holds our school record for the week. He wrote 18 lines of code in his first hour.

A fourth grade student celebrates after she struggled with using "Repeat" blocks.

Coding over the lunch hour.

Third Grade students work together on a tough coding puzzle.

Happy 80th Day of School!

We celebrated the 80's and the 80th day of school Tuesday! Check out our students and staff who dressed "totally awesome!" Take a journey back to school in the 80's by checking out our throwback pictures.

We are Thankful for our Bon Air Families!

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and time off from school. We are thankful for each and every student in our building and their families. Our Kindergarteners celebrated Thanksgiving with they annual feast. Together they made cornbread, pumpkin pie, popcorn, butter, and cranberry salad.