PenPal Schools

As we begin a new school year I reflect on several ideas and activities that I thought made a large impact on my students.  At the suggestion of Todd Burleson I investigated Pen Pal Schools with a group of 4th grade students.  

For 6 weeks students joined me for a collaborative learning adventure.  A student explains what we did:
"In Penpals Schools we get to chat with people around the world, the people I’m talking to are from, 1 from Australia, 3 from the US, and 1 from New Zealand. We also get to watch videos that help us learn, and we read stories about the problems, and we type, and help get ideas on how to stop the problems."
They wrote heart-felt responses like these:

 Students had deep discussions and debates around which issues were the most pressing (in their opinions).  Several reasons follow for why this was such a powerful learning experience:

1. They were engaged in authentic learning - they had a real audience to interact with
2. Multimedia made the project more appealing
3. They felt special having "friends" from around the globe

When our session was over I had these students write to their current 4th grade teacher or their future 5th grade teacher about their experience.  

Dear future 5th grade teacher,

At 1:00 every Wednesday a group of fourth graders we have been working to save the planet's problems. We do many serious things here we watch videos, talk to our penpals, read article, discuss things.When we get to answer things like how can you address problems not everyone wants to do it alone and students probably  want to talk about it with other people that are doing PenPal school.  Not every school can have penpals it would be great if  my future classroom we could do that so please consider this it would be a great opportunity for kids to talk to people around the world like you.

I learned that without bees our food storage will cut down short and we won’t have that much kinds of foods. Some people are hunting rhinos for their horns, they recruited woman to help save rhinos instead of men with guns which is good to know. People are also bleaching reefs and it looks very severe. Oklahoma is getting a ton of earthquakes which is sad. It’s kind of ruining part of Oklahoma where it hits.

My group and I are making up some ideas to help stop the problems. If you do this again next year there will be another great set of ideas to help us stop the terrible problems. Please do this again next year and it will help us and other people learn more about the world and help save it.

So we don't just learn STUFF,we learn things that maybe you wouldn't learn in school or at home so it's important that we have this.So i'm asking that you have this activity.  

We learned a lot about global warming and what we can do to help solve these very important problems that have occurred. We should know that these are happening and are major.

Just because it takes up some time doesn't mean we should spend it sweltering inside our classroom when we  could take steps in stopping super hot climates like this!

Sincerely,

Your next 5th grade student

My takeaways

The presence of a real audience was a motivating factor. Students were engaged in writing and discussing serious issues. I would absolutely do this again and the teachers involved were in full agreement. I am looking forward to doing this again this year!