E-pals Around the World

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

It is often difficult to motivate students to read and write. By integrating a letter-exchange program in the classroom, students become excited about literacy learning. This lesson helps you select e-pals for your students and develop real-life writing and learning experiences for them. Students learn the format of a friendly letter and the parts of an e-mail message. With careful selection of an e-pal group, students can also learn about other cultures, languages, and geographic areas that align with the curriculum in your school.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Letter Generator: Your students will use this interactive tool to write final copies of their letters to their e-pals.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Lehmkuhl, M. (2002). Pen-pal letters: The cross-curricular experience. The Reading Teacher, 55(8), 720–722.

• Pen-pal letters can offer many cross-curricular lessons and learning opportunities involving all subjects, including math, social studies, science, and technology.
  
  
• Pen-pal letters offer real-life hands-on experiences for students to use language. When writing their letters, students suddenly have an incentive to spell correctly, write in complete sentences, and use proper grammar and punctuation.
  
  
• Pen-pal letters offer many learning opportunities in social studies. By writing to a student from another part of the country or world, students can become aware of different cultures, religions, and languages.
  
  
• The Internet and other computer resources present many learning opportunities for students. E-mail is another pen-pal option.

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