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Elementary Students Try Long-Distance Learning

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: October 18, 2008

PORT RICHEY - If you want to learn about the world, books and maps and videos can only take you so far.

And since globetrotting isn't a viable option for the average grade-school student, there's a more practical way to learn about faraway places - make friends with someone who lives there.

Throughout this school year, students at Chasco Elementary School will improve their skills in classroom disciplines as they share their customs, rituals and way of life with children their own age in a distant, exotically unfamiliar land - Michigan.

Second-grade teacher Kristin Parmenter moved to Florida and began teaching at Chasco Elementary five years ago. Her mother Sandra Van Stratt also teaches grade school back in their hometown of Holland, Mich.

Parmenter and her mother have set up a pen pal project between their two classes every year as a way to open the door to a wider glimpse of the world, letting their students learn and teach one another.

This year, both schools have taken the concept further, with first- through fourth-graders taking part in their own pen pal projects. Fifth-graders will take the idea further, literally, taking up correspondence with fifth-graders in Brazil.

To a 6- or 7-year-old, Michigan can seem as foreign as the Amazonian rainforest. As in past years, in Parmenter's class, the pen pal connection starts at a personal level. The children simply have fun with the novelty of meeting someone their own age but who live 1,200 miles away.

The first few correspondences are from one entire class to the other. Then students are paired off with individual pen pals.

Likewise, at first the communications are about generalities, about the similarities and differences of living in their different states.

"We talk a lot about school," Parmenter said. The respective environments make a difference in schools and school days. This will become more apparent in a couple of months as the differences in seasons become more pronounced.

"So many have never experienced snow or what it is to go sledding or skiing," Parmenter said of her native Floridian students. Another addition this year will be video conferencing, and Parmenter is excited about her students seeing their first snowball fight in real time.

Personalizing the experience makes it easy to incorporate several classroom disciplines to the pen pal process. For first-graders, the first steps to making their new friends included some basic tools that will help them wherever they go in life.

Christine Ramirez, a school writing specialist, got them started by showing them where Florida is on a map of the United States, and where Port Richey is in Florida. Then she showed them where Michigan is, and how it is easy to spot because part of it is shaped like a mitten.

Then she used the opportunity to show the students a new skill, letter writing. Using a template, Ramirez showed them the basic parts of a letter as the students introduced themselves to their new friends up north.

To add an extra touch of geography to the exercise, the letters were printed on Halloween pumpkins cut out of construction paper, which the students topped off by gluing on Florida-shaped "stems."

The opportunities to work academics into the pen pal exercise grow exponentially with each grade. Parmenter's students are just a year older, but they exchange a lot of science in their pen pal correspondences.

"We do a lot with nature," she said.

One subject that fascinates the students on both ends, she says, is their proximity to water. Holland, southwest of Grand Rapids, is by Lake Michigan, one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world. Her students always want to ask their new pals in Michigan if there are stingrays and octopus in the lake - there aren't - and the children in Michigan are in turn fascinated to hear that those creatures inhabit the Gulf of Mexico, and that you can't open your eyes when you go swimming because the water is salty.

It's easy as adults to forget these bits of information are all new to young children. They are all the more fascinating, Parmenter said, because they are learning them from each other.

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