Bridging the Distance With London

Each year Ms. Alexander's 2nd grade class at Rhoades Elementary studied England as a part of the school-wide study of holiday traditions from other countries. Ms. Alexander's students communicated with Miss Ottley's grade 2 class at Churchill Gardens Primary School in London, England during the project, 'Friends Across the Ocean.'

Student Objectives Met:

Students recognized the need for information and formulate questions based on information needs.
Students identified a variety of potential sources of information, developed and used successful strategies for locating information, and selected and organized information appropriate to the problem or question at hand.
Students produced and communicated information and ideas.
Students participated effectively in groups to pursue and generate information and share knowledge and information with others.
Students respected othersí ideas and backgrounds and acknowledged their contributions.
Students used technology as a tool to achieve goals.

Content Area Links:

English: The students wrote introductory letters using friendly letter format.
Map Skills and Geography: The students used a map of London, England to identify the school location in relation to their school.
Literature: The students summarized the parts of the story when they read and discussed the novel.
Related Arts : The students performed a Christmas holiday play based on American & British traditions.
Art: The students made English crackers for Christmas & cornhusk dolls for Harvest time.
Music: The students learned English carols at Christmas time.

Information Literacy & Indiana Academic Standards for 'Friends Across the Ocean': Grade 2

Activities:

The students wrote letters of introduction to the British pals, including a photograph of each student.

In the fall these second grade classes took a walking tour of Indianapolis to look at historic and contemporary architecture of buildings to find geometric shapes in the environment. Students used a digital camera to take pictures on their walking tour of Indianapolis, pictures of Rhoades School, and casual photographs of the class doing research. The digital pictures were posted to the web page for their British pen pals to see.

Rhoades' students exchanged their research about Indianapolis and Westminster, England using a web page format. A scanner was used to digitize student drawings that connected with their research.

Rhoadesí students did a WebQuest on an imaginary trip to London at Christmas. Each student had a part of the planning of the trip. Some students were meteorologists who found out the weather for London during December so the students could plan what clothes to pack. Other students were tour guides who located hotel and attraction information for the group. The final project was a travel brochure that showed the information provided by each studentís research. See an example in pdf format.

Students compared holiday traditions in England to US holidays. Rhoades' students wrote about their own family's holiday traditions. The stories were sent to their pen pals at Churchill Gardens Primary School in London, England. The British students emailed their holiday stories to Rhoades' students.

Rhoades' students videotaped their play about British & American Christmas traditions and sent a copy to their British pen pals.

Ms. Alexanderís students mailed Ms. Ottleyís students a scrapbook made from writing about themselves, Rhoades School, and the Indianapolis community. The Rhoadesí PTO gave money to buy each student in both schools a T-shirt with the project name on it. Ms. Alexander visited London over spring break that year to present Ms. Ottley's class with their shirts.

The book Amelia Bedelia 4 Mayor by Herman Parish was chosen as a book study because it coordinated with the study of each others'communities - Indianapolis & London, and how communities choose their government leaders. Grant money allowed students at both schools to received their own copy of the book. amazon.uk.com was used to deliver the novels to the London school. Teachers emailed class summaries of the book action to the other class.

In May, Rhoades students met their pen pals in a videoconference in the distance-learning lab at Rhoades. Their pen pals traveled to London College to a telecommunications lab. The students talked about their neighborhoods and families.

Evaluation

Student progress was evaluated using a research rubric, teacher observation, comparison of monthly writing assessment scores, and comparison of language scores from fall & spring achievement testing