Colombian Pen Pals

As many of you may already know, I lived in Colombia (South America) for two years, where I taught second grade.  Mr. Wall and I taught at an International School called Colegio Panamericano in Bucaramanga, Colombia.  It was an amazing experience and we are still connected to Colombia in many ways.  Last year Mr. Wall's fourth grade class became pen pals with some of his former students.

This year in second grade we are planning to have pen pals of our own!  We will be writing letters to some of my former students at Colegio Panamericano.  Each student in our class will have a pen pal who they will write to.  In the beginning we will write the letters in class and I will scan their letters into an email which I will them send to one of the teachers at Colegio Panamericano, who will then share the letters with each pen pal in Bucaramanga.  Throughout the school year we will be learning how to type on computers and will eventually type these letters to our pen pals.  All communication will go through Mrs. Wall and the teacher (Miss Kathy) at Colegio Panamericano.

What to Expect:

• we will be writing one letter each month to our pen pals
• we hope to learn about the lives and culture of students in Colombia 
• how our lives are the same and different from these students
• any information we share with these students is private between our classes and their families
• we will share things about our traditions, culture and everyday lives   
• we will compare and contrast the experiences we have as students
• we will evaluate the writing process as we compose our letters 

CA Standards we will be working on through this experience:

• Social Studies-2.3 Students explain governmental institutions and practices in the US and other countries
• Writing Strategies-1.1, 1.2, 1.4 
• Writing Applications-2.2
• Written and Oral English Language Conventions-1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8

Please visit the following website to check out more details about the CA Standards we are working on through this Pen Pal Project http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/

By writing these letters in class the students will have the opportunity to write, revise, edit and publish letters to a friend who may have many similar life experiences to them (and hopefully some different as well).  At the beginning of each month we will share what we are learning about in school, pose questions to our new friends to learn more about them, and answer questions that have come from previous letters. 

Each family has the opportunity to participate in this project or decline participation.  Please contact Mrs. Wall directly (jwall@saintlawrence.org) if you would not like your child to write letters for this project.  We will begin this writing project this week in class and send our letters via email (Mrs. Wall will send them all) at the beginning of next week.