Cheam Primary School's Project with the United States

Working with schools in the United States has really expanded the horizons of the pupils in my class. Having a real audience motivates children to read and write. They have expanded their knowledge and understanding of the world through sharing experiences with young people with whom they can identify - the same age, struggling to acquire the same skills and having many similar experiences but also very different ones because they live thousands of miles apart.

Here are some ideas that we have had. I hope that they will get you started on your own projects.

Sharing a book about ourselves. Each child makes their own page with a picture of themselves and a brief autobiography including likes and dislikes.

Recording a favourite story onto tape and sending it with a copy of the book so that penfriends can listen to it and follow the words in the book. This is excellent for speaking and listening skills. The children are very motivated toimprove the standard of their reading and use expression when the tape isdestined to go abroad.

Sending photos of our homes, stating the age of the home and what it is made of. Our oldest home was a Medieval Hall House, partly made of wattle and daub with oak timbers. Their youngest home was three months old and made of aluminium and plastic!

We made a video about a local village with houses from different periods. The house had a village green, a pub, a war memorial and all the things that we associate with English village life. They sent a video of their locality.

Exchange graphs relating to topics, for example our pets. These vary tremendously from country to country.

Sharing a celebration. We sent a book we had researched on the history of Guy Fawkes. We included photos of our celebrations, our Guy competition and a packet of sparklers. We explained that Guy Fawkes was protesting against the same religious persecution that sent the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock.

The Americans sent us information on Thanksgiving. They sent us details ofwhat they ate and why and a book about the Pilgrim Fathers. We had aThanksgiving party and they had a Guy Fawkes party.

We sent a video of our May Day village fair. This included displays of Maypole dancing and country dancing. We sent a tape of English Country Dances and instructions on how to do them. Our friends sent a similar tape of Americandances including Yankee Doodle Dandy and Line Dancing.

Our penfriends hatched “Painted Lady” butterflies. They sent a video showing the stages of development and the eventual release.

We have sent video presentations of each Assembly that we have done to show what we have learned from the topics we have covered. Our penfriends have done the same. These have included work on penguins, hatching eggs, the Union Flag, the Pilgrim Fathers and other topics. The children are always fascinated to see what the other children are learning about.

We have made video presentations about where we live. The children presented the video, showing where we are on the globe, and also within the UK. They explained about the different countries that make up the UK and then took the children on a virtual tour of our school. This included interviewing key personnel and their classmates. This activity required writing scripts and practising to make sure that their presentations were clear. This was great forskills such as speaking and listening and writing for different audiences.

Each child made, with their family, a scrapbook page about their favourite place to spend the day or their favourite pastime. These pages were put into a scrapbook to give an overview of British life. The Americans did the same from their locality and lives.

As we are studying similar topics in Maths, we have shared worksheets including a topic on Jellybeans which our friends sent over. We worked on estimation, tens and units and graphs on favourite flavours. We compared our work with our penpals.

As we come from a rural community we have compared crops and livestock on our farms. We have also compared weather where we live. The children have become aware of time difference and the effect that climate and local environment haveon lifestyle diet and culture. They have also developed an understanding oftime differences and why they occur.

We have shared a topic on Apples. We have shared a map on where apples grow in America to discover that this is affected by climate and that unlike the UK,there are areas in America that produce citrus fruits, but conversely, cannotgrow apples. We have shared tasting of our favourite apple varieties andcompared the different varieties that grow in our countries. The Americanchildren sent us a book about their tour of a commercial apple orchard andpacking factory. We cooked favourite recipes British apple crumble andAmerican apple muffins and wrote them down so that we could make each others recipes.

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