Projects - Books as Bridges

So we're still out of school for sub-zero temperatures and I'm starting to worry we might be out again tomorrow because the forecast only has it warming up slightly. But since I'm at home in my pajamas eating peanut butter out of the jar let me catch you up on our pen pal project with the local organization Books as Bridges, part of the International Book Project.

Originally, we thought we were getting pen pals in Ecuador but it turns out they are in Panama, but since they speak Spanish and are learning English I don't mind! Our teacher contact is actually a Peace Corps volunteer working with the English teachers at this school.

For our first letter my students wrote 3 paragraphs - an intro paragraph in Spanish with phrases like "Me llamo _____", "Tengo ___ años" and "Yo vivo en Lexington." The second paragraph they wrote either in Spanish or English about their likes and dislikes. Our third paragraph was in English talking about Thanksgiving.

Our first letters from our friends arrived about the same time we were sending our first letters. They were more profiles than anything else and it looks like some of them were written last spring so I wonder how long this school has been waiting for pen pals. Most of the letters were written in English, although a few did have some Spanish. So my students should have had no problem reading them, right? Wrong! They were written in cursive, something we just don't teach here in the States anymore. So many of my kids struggled to read their letters.

To combat this problem I put them into groups and passed out their letters. Together they were supposed to help each other read and share aloud about their new friends. Then I went around the room and read the letters for the students who were having trouble. In the last few minutes we shared with the class 1 or 2 things about our new pen pals.

The students were very excited to read their letters, although I did have a few ask me if they were real (this being a consequence of our performance based summative assessments being video messages to a not-so-real girl named Maria who was moving from Spain to Lexington...oops!)

The next part of the project will be another letter and a cultural package to teach our new pen pals about life in Kentucky. Ideas the students have thrown out already include menus from Kentucky Fried Chicken, bottles of Ale8, and basketball schedules for UK and U of L, as well as pictures of our school. We'll also have a cultural lesson on Panama from a representative from The International Book Project. More updates to come as we continue!

Projects - Books as Bridges

I've been looking for ways to connect with classrooms in my target language classrooms and have struggled to find a way to do it easily with my students' novice low-mid Spanish level and coordinate it for as many students as I have (670+).  A solution finally presented itself with the Books as Bridges program.

Books as Bridges a local program that is part of the larger non-profit the International Book Project that sends books to developing countries. In the Books as Bridges program students write three letters to pen pals in a developing country, send a cultural package about what life is like here in Kentucky and they do a community service project somehow related to their pen pals. That all sounded awesome to me so I talked to our fifth grade team and they were also interested so I signed us up.



To make this relevant to our Spanish study we requested a partner classroom in South America that was studying English. The immersion school in our county has participated before in the past with other elementary schools in Latin America but I felt that my students' level of Spanish wasn't really at a point where we could be writing letters completely in the target language. But if we could write a small introduction in Spanish and then finish our letters in English that could work. A partner classroom that was learning English could do the same thing but in reverse - intro in English, rest of the letter in Spanish. My students are much better at reading and negotiating meaning than they are at producing now. Anything they couldn't figure out I could translate for them.

They told us that they had done that before so it shouldn't be a problem. However, apparently it's taking longer than usual. We got a late start anyway because I didn't find out about the program until past the official application date but they let us in. Now the contacts in Ecuador are being slow to answer emails. The back-up plan will be a partner classroom in Africa, which while it will still be cool to have pen pals and do a service learning project it will negate the whole reason I'm running it.

In the meantime we had a pen pal prep session and all the students are excited. Hope they let us know soon about our partner classroom so I have answers for my students who are beginning to pepper me with questions every time they see me. Fingers crossed!

Check out the International Book Project and Books as Bridges.