PenPal Schools Project

Students will:

• Be able to research a topic and learn about it.
• Be able to collaborate with another international student who is working on the same project.
• Know the rules of digital citizenship.

Vocabulary Words:

1. Collaboration: Collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce or create something.

2. International: International is relations between existing, occurring, or carried on between two or more nations.

3. Empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. 

4. Digital Citizenship: Digital Citizenship is the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use. 

Note: Each lesson may have its own vocabulary to add. 

To prepare for this lesson:

•  KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS IS PROJECT-BASED.  What you will be part of will be around 30 minutes once a week until the project is complete, usually about a month. 

• Watch the video intro to Pen Pal schools.

• Register for an account. (The first five teachers from a school can register for free) 

• Choose a topic. Each project comes with lesson plans including articles and videos to share with students.  
   
• To avoid any issues, familiarize yourself with the content. Go over plans and videos, etc. Each project is different, so you may need to teach some skills required first before you dive into the project.
   
• Set aside time each week for students to collaborate with their penpal. The timetable  is 30 Minutes Per Week for PenPal Time
   
• Talk about cultural differences and empathy.
   
• Play around with the teacher dashboard that enables teachers to view student work, provide feedback and tailor assessment.
   
• Deeper information can be found at  https://hundred.org/en/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started-with-penpal-schools. 

See Accommodations Page and Charts on the 21things4students.net site in the Teacher Resources. 

Directions for this activity:

1. Previous to the activity, have some conversation about digital citizenship and what that means. Talk about empathy and how to be respectful of people from different places.

2. Have students go to www.penpalschools.com.

3. Have the students click students.

4. Have students create a username and password.

5. It will prompt them to enter first name, last initial, year they were born. Students  may also provide a profile pic.

6. Penpal schools will them prompt students to enter your classroom code (case sensitive) 

7. You will have students select your activity. It will walk them through the activity. 

Different options for assessing the students:

• Observations
• Check for understanding
• Once your students enroll you'll be able to grade their work across a variety of reading, writing, technology, and social-emotional skills.