 While February is officially Black History Month in the United States, it’s important to discuss issues like discrimination, identity, and civil rights with your students all year long. Teachers around the world can incorporate lessons about civil rights movements from different countries to help students understand that the fight for equality transcends borders, skin color, religion, and gender. 
0 Comments
 PenPal-A-Palooza has officially started and our awesome students are loving making global connections through project based learning! To celebrate all of the great work our PenPals are posting, we will recognize four PenPal-A-Palooza All-Stars who excel in writing, reading, social and emotional learning (SEL), and digital citizenship each week. Will your students be next week’s All-Stars? Keep them inspired with these excellent examples!
Congratulations to this week’s PenPal-A-Palooza All-Stars: Cassidy, Jimmy, Marcus, and Alvaro! Your work inspires students around the world. See how these All-Stars are helping students develop key skills in these project based learning examples:
Have you joined PenPal-A-Palooza yet? Each day, thousands of students are making global connections and exploring different topics. Project based learning with PenPal Schools makes it fun for students and teachers to develop reading, writing, social and emotional learning (SEL), and digital citizenship skills!
PenPal-A-Palooza ends February 28, and each week we are going to recognize 4 all-star students that 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 All-Stars and how to support your students so they can win an award: 
Are you ready for PenPal-A-Palooza 2019? Join our biggest PenPal exchange of the year for a chance to win cool prizes, including a free school license! We’re challenging students around the world to write to as many PenPals as possible to see which school can send the most messages by the end of February. It’s easy to join- simply sign up and explore one of our many topics by the end of February to participate!
PenPal-A-Palooza is a great opportunity to discover the benefits of global project based learning. Today’s PenPal Stars exemplify the power of project based learning. Meet Gerda, Karolina, Rokas, Karolis, and Leva from Lithuania who recently explored the popular topic World Explorer!  Political leaders across the USA are being sworn into office this month. As elected officials, they’ll help make decisions that affect towns, cities, and states across the USA. Young people have a lot of opinions and ideas about the issues affecting their futures. That’s why so many students are exploring American Perspectives, a project based learning unit that allows students to form and share opinions about some of today’s most important issues such as education, health care, the economy, energy, immigration. Students have access to information about a variety of political perspectives through guiding questions, videos, texts, and images.
This week, we are excited to highlight a 5th grade class from Fox Meadow Elementary School in New York, USA as our PenPal Stars! Join more than 1,100 students as they participate in Holidays & Festivals of the World this month! Many countries are getting ready to celebrate holidays such as Christmas, New Years, and Día de los Reyes Magos and students are excited to share their holiday traditions! Use this excitement to motivate students advance their writing skills and share their culture and traditions with our collaborative learning community.  Students love to read the comments that their PenPals leave on their writing, but we know that students need support to leave critical, relevant, and helpful feedback. It’s time to take student writing to the next level with new peer assessment & badging! Now, students have the opportunity to give and receive specific feedback from dozens of peers around the world.  The new peer assessment reviews are designed to help students improve their writing. Instead of simply upvoting a great response, now students can analyze why the response is great by giving reviews like Inspiring, Uses Facts, and Super Spelling. Students also earn badges based on the number of reviews they receive! See how peer assessment can improve your students’ writing by enrolling in a PenPal Schools topic. Happy PenPal-ing!
 In November, students from around the world participated in a special photography contest to share photos of the people, places, and things they are grateful for. Students participated in the special PenPal Schools topic Giving Thanks Through Photography and submitted photos to the Showcase. The PenPal Schools team chose the 5 best student photos and shared them on social media for community voting.
Your votes have been counted, and we’re excited to announce that Lera from Ukraine is the winner! Congratulations, Lera! Check out her winning project:  In “Charting a Course for Success: America’s Strategy for STEM Education,” the Executive Office of the President of the United States states that “the pace of innovation is accelerating globally, and with it the competition for scientific technical talent.” The report lays out a strategic five-year plan to improve STEM education in the United States.
PenPal Schools connects students from 150 different countries, so we know that the emphasis on STEM is not only happening in American schools. Teachers around the world have been inundated with STEM projects, curriculum, and resources. STEM education and innovation is no longer limited to the borders of a nation. Technology allows us to connect and collaborate globally, so it’s critical that STEM education prepares students to be competitive in the global STEM workforce. Thanks to the internet, schools across the country and around the world have more access to STEM curriculum and resources than ever before.  For many of our readers, it’s almost holiday break! Parents, students, and teachers alike are counting down the days until vacation. However, how can you make the most of the time you have left?
|
RSS Feed
RESOURCES |
SUPPORT |
|
