Today we had a chance to Mystery Skype! The students had no idea what class we were skyping with. Their goal was to cooperate as a team to try to figure out the location of that class.
There were a few rules to the Mystery Skype. Students had to ask closed questions (yes or no answers). Classes went back and forth asking questions to help them find the location. If a class asked a question that received a yes answer, they got to ask a follow up question.
In order to be as efficient as we possibly could, students chose different roles for the afternoon. Each of these jobs had their own importance in the attempt to solve our mystery. We started with our inquirers. The inquirers were in charge of asking relevant, closed questions that would help others to narrow down where the other class could be found. The inquirers tried to use their knowledge of geography to hone in on the other classes location. They asked questions such as “are you east of the Mississippi River?” The response was “no” which helped us to remove quite a few states!
We also had two question keepers. The role of these two students was to work at the laptops. They typed in each question as it was asked as well as the response. This allowed for us to review the information that had already been shared.
Once our inquirers got answers to their questions, we had three Google Mappers who used online maps to search based upon the clues. They were able to use the computers to zoom in on different regions, states and cities. They could share information they found to help create new question.
Our runner was quite the multi-tasker. She was in charge of solving any problems that other students encountered. She also took information and questions from the other students and shared it with our inquirers. She was called the runner for good reason!
Our last two jobs were our logical reasoners and clue keepers. Our logical reasoners were in charge of using given information to try to remove possible states. They used a puzzle of the United States to pull away states that we knew it could not be. While they worked on this, our clue keepers used maps to mark down any relevant information. They could cross out, circle, or dot areas to help us figure out the location of the mystery class.
So many great questions were asked on each side. The other class was able to narrow down that we lived in Massachusetts. We were able to figure out that they lived in California. We started running out of time though so we had to each give one large clue that would help the other class determine the location. We shared that we were right next door to Plymouth, which is where the Pilgrims landed when they first arrived in North America. After taking a closer look at the map, they were able to determine that we lived in Plympton! They then shared the hint that where they lived had the largest population in their state. Our Google Mappers switched over to Google Search to find their information. We decided that they lived in Los Angeles, California. We were correct!
The next step was to try to figure out whose class we were skyping with. We thought about who we knew that taught out there and guessed that it was Mrs. Yollis’ class. We were right again! We’ve spent a lot of time this year learning from Mrs. Yollis’ blog so we were able to be great detectives and solve the mystery!
We want to thank Mrs. Yollis and her class for taking the time to skype with us! They had amazing questions and worked incredibly well as a class. Mrs. Yollis is a very lucky teacher to have those students!
*What clue helped you figure out they lived in Los Angeles?*
*What was your favorite part about mystery skyping?*
*If we mystery skyped again, what job would you like to have?*