PenPal-A-Palooza 2020

You and your students are invited to join classrooms from around the world in the biggest PenPal exchange of the year: PenPal-A-Palooza 2020! To join PenPal-A-Palooza simply participate in any PenPal Schools topic during January or February 2020. 

During each week of PenPal-A-Palooza we’ll celebrate two students who demonstrate excellence in reading, writing, or digital citizenship. At the end of PenPal-A-Palooza, we’ll also recognize ten students who submit outstanding projects during the months of January and February. That’s over 20 chances for your students to be recognized for their hard work on PenPal Schools! 

Join PenPal-A-Palooza

Join over 7,000 students from more than 20 different countries who are already participating in PenPal-A-Palooza 2020!

PenPal Stars recognized during PenPal-A-Palooza will each receive a PenPal Schools t-shirt, stickers, a cardboard VR headset, and a feature on the PenPal Schools blog!

How to Make the Most of PenPal-A-Palooza

During PenPal-A-Palooza we are going to recognize all-star students who demonstrate excellence in reading, writing, social & emotional skills, and digital citizenship! Here’s a sneak peak of what we’re looking for in our PenPal-A-Palooza Stars!

Wonderful Writers

Students will have to put all their writing skills to the test! PenPal Schools encourages writing across disciplines, and we’ll be looking for Wonderful Writers in all of our topics. While spelling and grammar are important for this award, we will also be focusing on bigger skills such as structure, transitions, punctuation, writing style, and originality.

Dynamic Digital Citizens

We are looking for students that actively create a positive digital reputation, protect their personal information and passwords, do their best to prevent cyberbullying, practice international mindedness, contribute to productive online discussions, and efficiently search for information online.

Excellence in Empathy

Students who demonstrate excellence in social and emotional learning (SEL) skills such as respect, self-awareness, empathy, collaboration, motivation, social engagement, identifying problems and analyzing solutions, ethical responsibility, and international mindedness have a chance to be recognized as a Star during PenPal-A-Palooza!

Reading Rockstars

We’re looking for students that are advancing as readers and demonstrating reading comprehension skills. Summarizing, citing evidence, fact checking, making comparisons, and using vocabulary from the text are all ways that students can demonstrate reading comprehension skills.

Join PenPal-A-Palooza

​Is there a student or a group of students from your classroom that should be profiled as PenPal Stars in 2020? Click here to nominate a PenPal Star!