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Penfriends and Ideas on what to write

Corresponding with people around the world is a rewarding experience for the students. There is so much they can get out of it. Everything from making new friends to broadening their horizons. Our students love it when they send a question to a penfriend and then receive a reply the next day.

Finding a Penfriend

There are a number of different ways to find a penfriend online. One way is to use online web sites such as ePals.com that are specifically aimed at schools looking for penfriends around the world. You can either register your school there or search their extensive database. Another way is to approach schools direct. You can find us on the first page of results at popular search engines such as Google.com, Alta Vista, Excite.com and Yahoo.com if you type "junior school England". So, obviously we don't need to go out looking for penfriends. We usually get more enquiries than we can handle.

When students start writing to penfriends there are two things you have to consider as they might cause things to go wrong. First is timing. Check holidays in the countries you are going to correspond with. In England we have three semesters with mid-term breaks. Our longest break is 6 weeks during July and August. The second thing to watch out for is, what to write about. Quite often, unless it is planned well, correspondence tends to dry up after only 2 or 3 letters.

What to write about

The first few letters are usually easy. Basically introductions about self, family, home and school. It is best not to write too much in the first letter as it is so easy to run out of things to say. Then, as things progress, add information about places visited at the week or events attended.

Culture
Each student picks one thing which they think represents their country. Then, on an A4 piece of paper, they draw a picture and write a short paragraph about it. An another version of this project is to write two lists: one for your country and one for what you think represents your penfriend's country. Then exchange the lists by e-mail.

Questions
Split the class up into groups of about 4-5. Hand each group a topic heading and ask them to write at least 5 questions. Topics could include: School, Home, Religion, Food, Television, Free time, Sport, Books and Wildlife. Send the questions off to your penfriends and after they have been returned, get each group to make a report based on the answers.

Local Area
Choose tourist attractions and either maker a web site for each or put together a package of brochures and pictures to send by regular mail. Another idea is to describe the view from the classroom window. Comparing other things would also be interesting: shops, transport, tradespeople, etc.

School
Comparing school life would fascinate most students. Who has the hardest life? Check out length of school days, number of holidays, weight of school bag, quantity of homework, strictness of teachers, etc.

Weather
We usually do a weather project where the students learn about different seasons around the world. We also include in this times of sunrise/sunset and how the length of day varies at different times of year. We then compare this with our penfriend's country at the same time of year.

Diary

Each students keeps a diary for writing what they do each day. Include information such as lessons learned, food ate, games played, etc.

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