Building Community Through Hummingbirds
Using the Journey North website has given my students a wealth of information. Using the e-Pal website has helped them reached across cultures to learn about other people who inhabit the world. In doing both activities, they have become part of a global community of learners. Hummingbirds have provided the link to tie the two experiences together. Here are some highlights of the project.

Getting Ready: Letter Writing Skills
Most students have not been letter writers, and for many this is their first e-mail experience. I begin the process early in the year with a lesson on what a good e-mail looks like. I send a model message to my students so it is the first e-mail they receive. I have them open it, we read and discuss it, and then they compose a reply to me using a writer’s checklist. Then they learn to send it. I often revisit the checklist during the year.

Unfortunately, because I am not bilingual, my students do not read or write my class work in Spanish. But they do receive Spanish instruction one period a week as part of the 5th grade Specials curriculum. Silvia, however, is bilingual and her students do respond to our e-mails mostly in English, with some Spanish, because they are learning English with her. It is amazing how much they progress during the course of a school year! The teacher I worked with last year attributed it to having a real live reader on the other end. If I do need to send something in Spanish, a translator for almost every language imaginable is built right into the e-Pals website.

Getting Ready: Vocabulary and Comprehension Lessons
I see the kids in the computer lab only one period a week. Because I am a former reading teacher, I customize each vocabulary lesson by pulling out words from the outstanding Journey North slideshow that they will read. I pick words that I don’t think my students know or ones that have multiple meanings. We complete a worksheet together, matching words to definitions (I write mine on the SmartBoard). We talk about the words before we read the slideshow. That way I access prior knowledge, create an anticipatory set, and they have a reference to use as they read independently.

I also write my own comprehension questions and the students read to find the answers. We go over them when they are through writing. I have kept their papers and this hummingbird “book” will go home at the end of the year.

Exploring Hummingbirds and Their Habitats
I have shown my students where their e-Pals live on a map. They know that the hummingbirds stage in that particular region of Mexico for their northern migration over the Gulf. They are amazed that those little critters can fly 500 miles non-stop! My students have also learned about the weather and how it affects migration. (They are jealous of their e-Pals’ warmer climate, especially that their school has a pool!)

They have been very interested in torpor and what hummers eat. When the weather warms I hope to get planters to put on poles outside the windows of all three classrooms so that I can hang hummingbird feeders. I think they will be really enthusiastic observers. Of course, we will submit any data we record to the Journey North website!

The Exchange: Symbolic Hummingbirds, Slides, and a Celebration
After their first Journey North lesson in October, students made beautiful paper hummingbirds and sent them to Mexico on a symbolic fall "migration." They will soon receive birds made by their e-Pals in honor of the northern spring migration.

Our e-Pals sent us a PowerPoint about the Yucatan that was very interesting. None of my kids had any idea that there were pyramids in Mexico. The food slides really interested them too and they plan to ask about it when they e-mail next time. We have made slides and are almost ready to compile a return slideshow to let our friends know about our region, including the Phillies, Eagles, cheesesteaks and hoagies. (We’re in southern NJ only 8 miles across the Delaware River from Philly.)

My students have learned that their e-Pals, though thousands of miles away, are just like them. They like the same things: wii, PS2, Jonas Brothers, even the same food and, can you imagine, the same wrestlers! Cultures may be different, but kids are kids!

Because of our connection to Mexico, we will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo in the 5th Grade this year too. I have organized it with the help of our other Specials Teachers (Music, Art, and Spanish). Students will move through a series of stations where they will complete an informational webquest on our mobile laptops, sing Spanish songs, play Mexican games and soccer, dance the Mexican Hat Dance and Macarena, smack some piñatas, and, of course eat! One of my classes will prepare the tacos and the teachers will make some food too. There is a small Mexican population in town so some students will wear their native dress and others will circulate wearing costumes. Parents will be encouraged to attend and are invited to bring goodies too. Photos will be taken to send to our e-pal friends. It will be a great way to culminate our year of cultural exchange.

Advice on Setting Up an Exchange
My advice to teachers wanting to do an e-Pal exchange is to start before the school year begins! There is a lot of planning involved to set up the accounts and find a classroom match. On http://www.epals.com you must create a profile and post it so you can find a class to correspond with yours. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right “fit”. (I was very lucky to find Martise Brown at Piaget School last year, and very luck to be able to continue this year with Silvia.) There are also many cooperative projects that students can connect with on e-Pals, including global warming, habitats, weather, water, people and culture.

Parental permission is required for those students under the age of 13. Each student gets a login and password so I make a table and mail-merge labels with that information as well as their e-pal’s information which I affix to index cards. I keep them in an envelope and they are labeled with seat numbers so I can pass them out and gather them up quickly. For snail mail items I print another set of clear labels which go onto the back of the projects so they are clearly marked with my student’s name and their recipient’s name.

(You can also find partner classrooms through Journey North >>.)