Kenyan Penpals

Back in December, our teacher told us that she had found a class in Nairobi, Kenya who wanted to be penpals with us.  Our penpals go to Bensesa School and we enjoyed looking at their website to see pictures of them and their school. 

Eagerly, we wrote our first letter to them.  In it, we introduced ourselves, told a little bit about our school and asked some questions.  Here are a couple of letters:

We also included some hand drawn illustrations to go with our letters -- like this:

Our teacher then mailed them off and the wait began...
It took a very long time for us to receive anything in return, but one day in March, an envelope from Kenya arrived...

In it, we found letters for all of us!  They told us more about themselves, their school and what their life is like.  Some of them also included illustrations.  We loved reading their letters!

We were surprised by some of the things about their letters -- the paper was very thin, their printing is a little different than ours, their school is made of iron sheets and their class has 40 students.

Our teacher decided that we weren't going to write a normal letter back to them.  Instead, she taught us about timelines by reading "Timelines, Timelines, Timelines" by Kelly Boswell.

Photo Credit: Amazon

 

We created a timeline called "A Day in the Life of..." in which we shared what a school day (from the time we get up, to the time we go to bed) is like.  We also didn't write it on a normal piece of paper...instead we used adding machine tape.  Here you can see some of us working on them:

 

Finally, we illustrated them and will include a photograph of ourselves.  Here are some finished products:

 

And now, the wait begins again...hopefully it doesn't take them too long to respond!

 

We were wondering...

Have you ever written to a penpal in another country?

What would you want to tell kids in another country about yourself or where you live?

 

New Learning With Our Student Teacher

Right from the beginning of the year, we have had a student teacher in our classroom.  She started out watching what goes on in our classroom about once a week.  We quickly came to love the time that Ms. V (or Ms. Vanderzwan) spent in our room.  A few weeks ago, she started full time in our classroom.  Here she is introducing herself...

I am a fourth year education student from Red Deer College's Middle Years program, which is a collaborative program with the University of Alberta.  I specialize in grades 4 - 9, so I cannot wait to experience grade three - it is such a change for me! I was born in this community, and I went to school here from kindergarten to grade 12!  I live very close to the school and I love being able to walk there every morning. I am very creative and imaginative, and I love to see kids using their imaginations!  I absolutely love reading, art, sports, travelling and the outdoors.  I know that as a class we will have so much fun together, and I am already dreading leaving at the end of April.  I started coming into the classroom once a week at the beginning of September (I was even there for the first day of school!) and I've gotten to know the kids so well already.  I can't wait for us to learn from each other!  

And we can't wait to learn from her either!

She told us that she is going to be doing a lot of the teaching in our classroom as our regular teacher helps her to become an even better teacher.  For one of her first lessons, she started by having this note taped to our lockers:

We were so curious about what this was going to be all about.  She told us that we will be building a "MonstroCity" and shared this video with us.  There were so many cool monsters in that video -- we couldn't wait to get started!

In our first activity, we had to write a letter to Ms. V. telling her why we were the right person for this job.  In another activity, we had to share what we already know about building.  Here is what one of the posters looked like:

Today, we found out that we are going to have grade 4 penpals in another community who will be able to help us, because they learned all about building in grade 3.  After we read the letters they wrote to us, we wrote letters back to them telling more about ourselves and asking questions about building.

It's been an exciting start with Ms. V. and we can't wait to find out what's coming!

We were wondering...

What do you know about building?
Have you ever had a student teacher in your classroom before?