Will you be my pen pal?

I remember the one and only time I had a pen pal. I was in first or second grade and my pen pal was from Wisconsin or one of the other states in the middle of the country. I remember getting letters in class from my pen pal, and thinking how cool it was that I had a friend in another state. Unfortunately our writing stopped at the end of the school year.

Since then I have wished that I had had a pen pal from some other cool place like France, for instance (I was totally obsessed with France from fourth grade on through high school and most of college. It wasn't until I lived in the Czech Republic that that obsession died down a bit). But alas, I never did find one. And, I must admit, I'm horrible at writing. So nowadays I try to write my real friends that I do know, rather than finding myself a pen pal. But that doesn't mean that I can't find pen pals for other people!

And that's just what I did...well, my mom did actually, and now that I think about it, I can't really take the credit for the idea either--that would be Connie. In any case, all nine of my fifth graders have pen pals in America thanks to my amazing mom! And my kids are totally stoked about it.

Most of today we spent talking about what kinds of things you would include in a letter. Questions about there families, about their hobbies, about their schools, etc. Some of my students were more excited than others, or at least on the surface. At the end of class today, I was really surprised to see how much they were able to write, and how good their writing was.

It's fun to have a class project, and a way for my fifth graders to have another reason why they should learn English other than the fact that their parents said that they had to. I'm excited to see how this all pans out. I'll definitely keep everyone updated.

Who knows? Maybe their relationships as pen pals can become life long friendships.

Things to do: find cute stationary for girls, and manly stationary for boys (yes, my boys wanted stationary, which may prove to be a very big challenge).