Student Pen Pals
One of the favorite things we ever did in our teaching was setting up pen pals for our students. We were a bit nervous at first because we didn’t really know where to start when making connections. However, after having multiple amazing experiences with student pen pals in our classes, we highly recommend it! In this post, we’ll be covering the multiple benefits of having pen pals, as well as some tips on how to get started.
Benefits of Pen Pals
Making Personal Global Connections
We live in a globalized world and have access to more information than ever before, but it can be tough for students to make personal connections with others. Through our experiences, we’ve been able to pair up our students with pen pals from Spain, Peru, Switzerland, Ireland, and Germany! Doing this allowed our students to form one-on-one connections with students from around the globe and learn about their similarities and differences.
Improve Communication Skills
Writing may not be a favorite activity of all of our students, but if they’re writing to a pen pal, it can become much more enjoyable! Writing to their pen pal allows them to work on multiple different skills, such as formal letter writing, email etiquette, and practicing another language, and it can also help your students make connections to your current curriculum.
Making Friends
A more obvious social benefit is your students can make friends. This doesn’t always happen, but we’ve been very pleased to see many of our students create amazing friendships. Some of our previous students have even shared that they continued communicating with their pen pal after the school year ended!
Examine Personal Culture
While students are learning about their pen pal’s culture, this also gives them the opportunity to examine their own. Many students have not had the chance to travel abroad, so having to communicate about their culture provides a way to view it a bit differently. In our experience, it wasn’t until we were fully outside of U.S. culture that we could truly see the differences, but communicating with an international pen pal offers a taste of this!
Combat Prejudice and Intolerance
While there are many resources that can help us learn about different cultures, discrimination based on various elements of social identity is very prevalent. With that, it’s vital that our students grow to be more understanding, open-minded individuals. Having pen pals can be a way to break down those barriers and allow students to gain connections they otherwise might not have thought possible.
Pen Pal Tips
If having student pen pals sounds like something for your class, here are some tips to help you get started:
First off, we recommend using the site epals.com and setting up an account with your school email (if you have one). From there you can start making connections with other teachers either internationally or domestic. The best way to decide where to start is really think about what you want to gain from this experience.
Once you’ve created a partnership with another teacher, there are multiple ways to go about it based on your goals!
Pen Pals in the Classroom
Overall, getting pen pals can be one of the most memorable and impactful things you’ll do with your students! If you’re curious about our student pen pal experiences, we’ve put this guide together to help get you started! It contains more details on where to start, different types of experiences, many prompts, and more!
If you’re interested in more teaching ideas, check out our blog post on creative social studies teaching strategies! If you like this post on the benefits of student pen pals, consider watching the corresponding video here.
Are you looking for some new teaching ideas to engage your students in your social studies class? If so, you’ll love our FREE guide: 5 Creative Projects to Ignite Student Engagement in Your Social Studies Class. These activities have both printable and digital options and can work for any social studies subject!
