Week 11 Pen Pal Presents!

For the past couple of months, the 8th graders have been working on the Pen Pal Project. Finally, we finished all of the Pen Pal presentations where the students had to do research on all of the pen pals in the class and report it to the class in English. I was impressed as when I was in middle school, I never had to do anything as difficult as that when I was learning Spanish. It was not until college that I had to present research and graphs in Japanese.

As interns, we had to organize all of the pen pal presents from the sister school in Nebraska. It is quite a task to go through and organize over 100 presents into 10 different classes. It takes days to go sort through all the presents and makes sure they are "suitable". We found some interesting things in the presents that make it fun to do.

 (Organizing the presents)

Once we finished sorting through the presents, we took them to each of the homerooms and gave out the presents. It was like Christmas morning and all of the kids were so excited. They cannot stop laughing and having a good time. Everyone wants to show each other what presents they got. It was fun to see the kids put on Nebraska t-shirts and hats.

Also, we started collecting the presents from the 8th graders to send to Nebraska and helped them write their final letters to send to their pen pals before the winter vacation. I think the pen pal program is fun for the kids and helps them learn about another culture at the same time. I really wish I would have had this kind of experience when I was in middle school as well. It is nice that these kids get to experience having a pen pal and have the chance to meet their pen pal when they visit Nebraska when they become 9th graders.