Pen-pal Letters:The Cross-curricular Experience I asked

Pen-pal Letters: The Cross-curricular Experience
    Realizing the benefits that "hands-on" real-life lessons can have in helping students learn, I asked my cousin, a first-grade teacher in a bilingual program in Tucson, Arizona, if she would be interested in having our classes become pen pals throughout the school year. I felt this would prove beneficial for lessons in reading and writing for my inner-city second graders and would promote their knowledge about our city and state (Toledo, Ohio). I did not anticipate that the letters would expand into cross-curricular lessons involving all subjects and present new learning opportunities.
    As we ventured through the second grade, the pen-pal letters offered many learning opportunities. Many of the lessons are cross-curricular and easily integrate with various subjects.
    The most obvious subject was reading. Pen-pal letters sparked a genuine curiosity in my students. Even my nonreaders wanted to find books about Arizona and, more specifically, Tucson. While their excitement grew, they sought out additional sources of knowledge beyond books.
    Pen-pal letters also made my students more interested in language, spelling and writing. The students began to understand the concept of synonyms in context. When my students were explaining how they felt about receiving letters, they used words such as excited, glad, and happy. I used these experiences to review our previous lessons on synonyms.
    The students suddenly had an incentive to spell correctly. They wanted to "show off’ their knowledge to their pen pals and became frustrated when they could not read what their pals wrote. Capitalization, punctuation, and proper grammar were all important lessons learned through writing to our pen pals.
    Having pen pals from Arizona also introduced my students to new vocabulary. When we received a letter from our pen pals and were in doubt of the meaning of a word, we used context clues to attempt to infer its meaning. We then would verify our answer with a dictionary or an encyclopedia. Pen-pal letters were easily transformed into learning activities.
    Maths was one more area of learning that pen-pal letters made more intriguing. We began comparing temperatures and the times of sunrise and sunset. We started graphing the times the sun rose and set in Toledo. I questioned what the students thought would happen in Tucson. We began charting and graphing the sunrise and sunset times in both places. We predicted, looked for patterns, made inferences, and discussed our findings. We also decided to compare temperatures, keeping in mind that Tucson was in a desert and Toledo wasn’t. Time zones were also incorporated into the lessons. Trying to discover what our pen pals were doing at an exact time helped my students begin to understand the concept.
    Pen-pal letters offered many learning opportunities in social studies, too. My students became aware of different cultures, religions, and languages, as well as similarities between Ohio and Arizona.
    Another subject was science. Letters with our pen pals also opened the doors of curiosity about weather differences between Ohio and Arizona. My students were amazed to find out that it snowed in the desert. They learned about the wide range of temperatures in Tucson and how the differing climates affected the landscape.
    Several students in my class loved learning about animals. Using a Venn diagram, we compared and discussed what animals were found in Tucson but not in Toledo and vice versa. We discussed the similarities between the animals found in Tucson and Toledo and what, if any, adaptations the animals made to live in either environment. Our science lessons depended greatly upon gathering information from the Internet.
    Use of technology was a beneficial and uncomplicated way for my students to find out interesting facts about Arizona. The Internet and other computer resources presented many learning opportunities. My students used the Internet to find information about Arizona, such as the sunrise and sunset times, daily temperatures, and pictures. The students looked up the information, wrote it down, and then shared it with the class (they also wrote it on a chart). In doing so, they had to ensure their observations were sensible. Following several weeks of trial and error, they began making inferences. They recognized that if our average temperature was 23T, it would not likely jump to 70T the following day. The students began to see their mistakes, figure out what was incorrect, and amend their information if necessary.
    Toward the end of the year, several of my students were able to use the computer to write their letters. Although e-mail was not available in my classroom, this would be another pen-pal option.
    The letters sparked a sincere interest in learning. Reading was no longer just a second-grade requirement but a way to learn about deserts, animals, people, and places. Writing became enjoyable, and my students understood the importance of good penmanship. They learned more about weather, temperature, and the effect that people have on the environment than they would have by reading a book. They gained practical knowledge they could apply to their daily lives and began to recognize that learning comes in different forms.
    The pen-pal writing experience was a yearlong endeavor that I will adapt in the future. The examples I have presented here reflect only a partial view of the many lessons we developed. Each letter presented new learning opportunities for my students and went beyond my original expectations. The potential is endless if we, as teachers, allow ourselves to be flexible and are willing to use "teachable moments" in our classrooms. I look forward to continuing to write penpal letters and to extending the lessons to correlate closely with the curriculum.