Pen Pals Plus! Practical Tips and Project Ideas for ESL Teachers Who Want to Collaborate.

In high school I got a pen pal from Holland and was told to correspond with her for a year so I did.  She seemed really nice and I think I still have the picture she sent me in a box somewhere.  It was a fun project but I can't say as we really connected,  we were teenagers who had never met so our letters mostly reported what we had been doing.  I don't think we ever ventured into our ideas, opinions, thoughts or feelings, that just felt too awkward.  This was in the 80's so we barely had computers and I was still typing my papers up on a typewriter so we were limited to snail mail.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love snail mail and receiving an electronic message never quite stirs up my excitement like opening an actual envelope with hand-written addresses on it, but today we have so many more options with how we can communicate with our peers across the world.  In addition to exchanging letters, we can actually work on projects together and share ideas.

By asking students to work together with their counterparts in other countries they not only connect with (and hopefully form friendships with) other students, they also develop skills using technology and learn how to share ideas with people of other cultures in order to reach a goal.

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A Few Things You Will Need to Do Before You Get Started

• You will need to connect with a teacher in another country who also wants his/her class to work with yours.  Keep in mind you want to find someone who works with a similar age group and number of students as you do and whose semester starts and finishes more or less at the same time.  Here are several ways to do that.
  • If you personally know any teachers who work in other countries contact them.  Even if they are not interested in collaborating, they probably know lots of other teachers who might be.
    
  • ​Reach out to teachers in facebook groups.  Facebook is full of teacher groups who have tons of members who might be interested in collaborating.  The only danger with this seems to be that teachers get too much response when they ask for collaborators.  If you see a post asking for collaborators and it has a lot of responses, it might be worth you time to reach out to one of the respondents who seems to be a good match for you.
    
  • There are some on-line services that match teachers up like ePals. I have not personally tried any of these so I can't vouch for them. 

**Make sure you can communicate well with the other teacher and be clear about exactly what you have in mind as far as what your students will be doing together, what your goals for the project are, how much time they would need to spend both in and out of the classroom, how many exchanges students would need to make.  This might take a bit of time so make sure that both teachers are excited about the project and are on the same page.  You might also want to discuss how students will be evaluated on their work and what the consequences would be if students aren't able to work effectively with each other because of things like attendance.

• You need to figure out how your students will be working together.  If you want your students to work on projects together you will need to have a way for them to share their work. There are many learning platforms available in which students can upload documents for other students to read or watch, they can have discussions, they can work collaboratively on the same document or edit each other's work.  After a class is set up, another teacher can be added and students from both classes can join.  Here are some free learning platforms teachers can use:
  • Schoology:  I have used this platform for many of my classes.  It is fairly user-friendly and you can set up assignments in such a way that students can look at each other's work and comment on it. For more information about how to set up a class in Schoology, check out this post by Adventures in ISTEM.
  • Google Classroom: I have not used Google classroom but it seems to be a similar to Schoology.  For instructions on how to set it up, The Educators Room has created this post.
  • Google Docs:  If you want your students to be able to share a document (either a written document or a set of slides) you should familiarize yourself and then teach your students how to use Google Docs.  You might want to do this even if you decide not to collaborate with another class because it will enable your students to turn in their work electronically and you can give them your feedback on their work electronically.  This saves a lot on printing out rough drafts and I don't know about you but I am much faster at typing than at writing things out by hand.  It also gives me unlimited space, not just a cramped margin.  

*If you are currently using another platform that will allow you to add anther teacher so your classes can work together, by all means, use that.  Just make sure that both teachers know how to use the platform and are comfortable with it before you get started.  Help each other out!

Introduction Project Ideas

The Story of My Name

Instead of just asking your students to introduce themselves and say one or two things about themselves, ask them to dive deep and explain their name to the person they will be working with. Have each student choose several of the questions below and make a video. They could just explain it themselves or they could get creative and interview their family members and friends who speak English.

• Who gave you your name and why?
• Does your name have a special meaning in any language?
• Were you named after anyone? If so, who? Why?
• Do you like your name? Why or why not?
• If you could choose another name, what would it be and why?
• Is your name soft or sharp?
• How do you think your name does or does not reflect who you are?
• How does your name feel in your mouth when you say it?
• Is there a song or story with your name in it?
• Do you share your name with any famous people?
• If your name were a color, shape, smell or taste, what would it be?
  
  
  

Ask students to put their videos up on a shared class platform. Assign each student to watch several students' introductions from the other class and comment.

Depending on how old your students are or how proficient they are at commenting, you might want to add some guidelines for how to comment. For example, you must respond to at least 2 specific things that were said in the video and ask one question.

Introduce Your School/City/Country/Region

​Divide the class into small groups who share a similar interest like sports, music, food, architecture, or geography. Let your students brainstorm interesting things and then either ask each group to choose an interest or have each person in class choose an interest and put them in groups according to their interests. 

• Have each group plan out a 5-10 minute video they will make introducing the place and the topic they are working with. Videos can include any of the following things:
  • A walking tour that explains important places to the topic.
  • An interview with someone who is connected with the topic.
  • An explanation of the history of that topic in that place.
  • A discussion of what is happening right now or in the near future.
  • A short clip of people participating in your area of interest.

If you coordinate topics with the other class, after making the videos, the groups from the two different countries could work together to create a presentation that compares and contrasts the topic in the two different places. Each group could then give the presentation to their classmates. After the presentations, students could come up with a list of things they are curious about, do some research and then discuss those things over video conferencing with students from the other country.

Collaborative Project Ideas

• Design a school curriculum that would help people from all over the world understand each other better. Ask either pairs of students or small groups to evaluate how well they think their schools are preparing them to be “global citizens” or “problem solvers.” In what ways could their respective educational systems be improved? 
  
• Write/illustrate a story together. Working with a student from the other country, have each student write a short story (one or two pages) then ask them to illustrate each other’s stories using drawings, photography, collage or any other medium they like. They can then present their joint work to the class or to a wider school or community audience. 
  
• Reading buddies. Ask students to pair up with a member of the other class and decide on a book or short story to read. Ask students to get together for a video chat several times to discuss the reading. When they have finished the book they could record a video chat in which they discuss one of the major themes of the work and if they would recommend the book to other students. 
  
• Solve a problem. Ask students to find something that they and their partner both find frustrating. They could then brainstorm together to find solutions. Once they have a long list of ideas they should choose the best 3 together. Each student will then bring the best three ideas to a group from their own classes, explain the problem and the three solutions and ask their classmates to choose the best one. They should take notes on what their classmates say and then summarize the discussion for their friend from the other class. The two students from different classes should then discuss if the answers were the same or different and why they think that was. At the end of the project students could either write a short essay or create a short video explaining the project and any insights they gained.
  

I hope you and your collaborators have a wonderful experience working together and that lasting bonds are created between individuals.  Let me know if you used any of the ideas!

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