Pen Pal Program

What better way to engage your progressing bilingual students in creative writing, then to set them up with pen pals of their target language?!

After observing my fourth year ESO students in their English class, at my bilingual public high-school in Alcalá de Henares, I came to the conclusion that there was quite a lack of interest and effort in writing assignments.

The majority of them seemed to just be bored 👎

I reflected on my own driving force to want to learn Spanish, and a lot of it came from social interactions and potential relationships I was exposed to.

So I decided to e-mail my high-school Spanish teacher and organize a pen pal exchange for my students, to bring some life and excitement to the classroom!

This project allows students to be creative in what they want to write and how they want to write it. They are encouraged to share with and inquire of their pen pal what they desire, giving them freedom and unleashing curiosity.

We do want them after all to achieve global understanding, connection, and communication, and having an international pen pal is a great way to do this!

THE BENEFITS

Pen pal relationships offer a number of significant inter-disciplinary benefits for your students, including:

• Valuable practice at writing letters in the proper format (Language Arts/Grammar)
• Increased awareness of societies and cultures from around the world (can be tied into social studies, geography, religion, and more!) 
• A chance to maintain ongoing communication with people who live far away
• Increased odds that your students will continue to be letter writers for the rest of their lives

ROLES

My lead teacher assigns the letter assignments and with the language assistant (me), we look over the letters to check for errors and appropriateness, after their letter draft is brought to class and peer-edited by fellow students, to emphasize group-work and collaboration.

I (the language assistant) will serve as a liaison between the Spain's English classroom and my American Spanish classroom, to arrange and oversee the exchanges.  

Of course, if a language assistant is unable to get in contact with a classroom from their native country, there are many pen pal sites on the internet to get matched up such as ePals 📧

EVALUATION and OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this project is to elicit stress-free creativity, enjoyment, and curiosity about other people from other cultures and backgrounds, while practicing writing skills (and even speaking skills, when reading the letters aloud!)  I believe attaching a grade to this, takes away from the pleasure it is supposed to instill.  I hope this project will lead students to further their interest and motivation in learning and pursuing English... having them want to learn, which would be far more beneficial to them.