Our 4th grade and 2nd graders have pen pals from Spain. The children are enjoying writing and videoing to their new friends. Here is a recap from Senora Carpenter.
 
Our HVES fourth grade students received videos from their pen pals in Spain. The pen pals told us about themselves in Spanish. Our students noted that they speak really fast! Sometimes they were hard to understand, but we were able to pick up on a lot of words. It was also cool for students to hear their accent. Since they are in southern Spain, many of them make sounds a little differently. For example, they pronounce their "c"s and "z"s like "th". Shortly thereafter, our fourth graders sent videos back to Spain where they also introduced themselves in Spanish. Next time, we are going to send them videos in English and they will also send us videos in English. It will be cool to see what they are capable of saying in our language!
 
Our second graders recently received hand-written letters from pen pals in Seville, Spain. Each letter was written to one of our students in English (many were in cursive!) and included a drawing on the back. They called us their "pen friends". Our students are in the process of writing back to them in Spanish. We are making a rough draft and including our first names, ages, likes, and family members. We will make a final draft and add a picture as well.
 
It is great to see the students interacting with peers from other cultures. They get to see a lot of similarities and differences. A noticeable similarity is that they like a lot of the same things that we like. They enjoy sports and video games! A cool cultural difference that we have seen so far is in their names. A lot of first names that are common there are names that we have never heard of. I wonder if they think our names are interesting!
 
It's also amazing for fourth graders to practice their speaking skills and second graders to practice letter writing. Learning Spanish helps them reinforce a lot of what they work on every day with Mrs. Mello, Ms. D’Agostino, Mrs. Ricci, and Mrs. St. Clair!

To view a couple 4th grade videos we are sending to Spain and some pictures of the 2nd grade letters, please click on the link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1P8w-jo3yhFQLCoBj2NYqu3DR6TRPbVh6
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