Pen Pals

    I had this great idea, or so I thought, of finding my upper grade students pen pals to practice keyboarding skills, word skills, language arts skills, research skills, and also work in some social studies (and eventually science in a different way). Because of the type of school I teach in the focus is language arts and math so students lose out on social studies and science in the classroom. I have been trying to find ways to incorporate these standards into my technology classes so that the students get both technology, social studies, and science. What I didn't know is how difficult it would be to find pen pals. Because of the way the social studies standards work third grade students look at social studies more of the world as a hole (current events, heroes, that type of thing), our fourth grade focusses specifically on the state, and fifth grade focuses on the United States and how it came to be.
   So, my plan of action was (is) to set up my third grade students with the adopt a soldier program. This way both students and soldiers (or troops, to be more non secular of military division) benefit from writing and receiving letters. It took a little bit of work but we are finally getting somewhere. I would like to set my fourth grade students up with a class from within the state of Nevada, maybe a Native American school or program, and then have my fifth grade students pen pal with European countries that either discovered, molded, or were a large part of the creating force of America. The last two are proving more difficult than planned, who knew.
   Once the students get their pen pal assignments they would then of course write, I should say type, to their pen pals, but then I was going to have them use the internet to research where their pen pal is, write a paper about the similarities and differences in locations, include pictures from the internet, teach good sources versus bad sources, and have the fourth and fifth grade students maybe even create a power point. We could even create graphs about where the pen pals are, how old pen pals are, their favorite activities and so on. The thing I love about the pen pal idea is the way it can be utilized in so many different ways to teach so many different standards and still be technology based. Sooo, my search goes on for the right fit for my fourth and fifth grade students, we will get their . . .