Writing with Pen Pal Schools

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher one day announced that we were going to have pen pals with students in Ghana. The whole class erupted in excitement! Which country? Will we get to write them everyday? Will we meet them? Can we ask them about their lives? Questions and comments bounced off the walls of my classroom until our teacher calmed us down.

However, it was the end of the school year and we sent our letters by mail. By the time the students got our letters and responded, we were out of school and never received them. It pained me not to know if she received my message! It would have been amazing to get to know someone outside of my hometown. Was she similar or different than me?

So, how do I give my students the experience of getting to know a student that lives beyond our country’s borders? By having my students write to Pen Pals with Pen Pal Schools!

If you are working with Pen Pals Schools for the first time, I have a couple of tips to help you plan how you are going to use Pen Pal Schools in your classroom.

1. Go through the course lessons yourself before assigning the course to your students. Read each article and watch the videos. Try answering all of the questions with your students in mind. While doing this, think, what skills will my kids need to be successful at doing this? This way, you are preparing for questions that kids may have and if they get stuck, you will know what to do.

2. Pre-teach a writing skill that they will need while writing to their Pen Pals. One of the biggest things I realized was that my students did not know how to write in a complete sentence or knew how to construct a proper paragraph. So, I taught that before they began and went over the importance of doing that (to be understood!). I also pre-taught using evidence from the text, adding detail to an answer, and editing before hitting send.

3. Do the Mystery Pen Pal Class activity. Under the introduction tab, there is an activity called “Mystery Pen Pal”. It comes with a lesson plan and printables. It helps teach the kids how to start a proper conversation with their Pen Pals.

4. Schedule time at least once a week where your kids can complete the assignment and check in with their pen pals. This was hard for me! I always have so many interruptions in my day and I am very short on time. Nonetheless, I still found 30 minutes during my week where my students log into Pen Pals Schools, read and write, and check in with their Pen Pals. Having this consistent routine for kids also made sure they were always checking in with their Pen Pals and engaged in the learning with them.

5. Check in with your students weekly and give them feedback on what they are doing with their assignments. You have to treat it like a regular assignment that you give in your class! That means you have to check in to make sure your students are writing. Under each tab, there is a grading feature that allows you to give feedback to your students on how they are doing with the assignment and talking with their pen pals. If you do this consistently, the students are more likely to take it serious and give good responses.

6. Allow the students to research the places where their pen pals are from. Take some time to look up the places where your pen pals are from. Find out what is happening there right now and have a discussion in your class about it. It will make it more real for your students.

If you use Pen Pals Schools and you have a tip to help make the experience better and help you set up for the first time, please feel free to add to the comments below!

My next post will be: I’m on Pen Pals Schools, Now What? This post will be about all the features of your account and your students’ accounts.