Teachers have used pen pals with their students for years. It is a wonderful teaching tool, but there were always some drawbacks. Trips to the post office for stamps never seemed to "be on the way." You always seemed to be short a stamp. These problems can be avoided with some good planning, but why not avoid them all whenever you can.

Instead of paper, pencil, envelopes, stamps and trips to the post office; now all you need is a computer and an e-mail account! The technology is there to be used. It may as well be you using it.

The next step is to find someone to correspond with. There are basically two ways to do this. One way is to use a service on the Internet. One such service is called "E-Pals". This site is designed to facilitate correspondence between students from different schools. Here, you will be allowed to add your class to a database of over 13,000 classrooms representing over 1,000,000 students. You can choose to add your class to this database, or you can just search the database for a class to contact yourself. Each class listed will give you some general information about itself (grade level, interests…). This makes your job of sifting through the list a bit easier.

If you choose to add your class(s) to this list, you are now making yourself available to be contacted by other schools. If you just search for a classroom to contact, you can do this as well.

By explaining what you want to do ahead of time, you can make sure that the student's messages do not go off on tangents. You can, for example limit your students' conversations to particular units you are in at the time. By setting up these "ground rules" ahead of time, you will keep the conversations going where you want them to go.

You may not want to put your classes into a database such as this. That's fine, you can still find plenty of people to participate as "PE e-mail pen pals."

Before you post a request for participating schools, make sure you know how many classes in each grade you have that are going to do this. Once you know this number you can begin to search for an equal number of other classes. It sounds like a simple thing to do first, but do not be surprised if you get far more people wanting to join you in this than you need.

When you do post your request, be very clear about how you want this to run. It is, once again best to set ground rules ahead of time, possibly stating that all messages must be about the students' physical education classes.

You could consider allowing related topics, but be careful. Kids can get off on tangents pretty quickly. You do not want this to get out of hand. By explaining what you want to do ahead of time, you can make sure that the student's messages do not go off on tangents. You can, for example limit your students' conversations to particular units you are in at the time. By setting up these "ground rules" ahead of time, you will keep the conversations going where you want them to go.

Make sure everyone involved knows how often you want to exchange messages. Once a month is pretty manageable. This gives everyone involved plenty of opportunities to write on a variety of topics, without feeling overwhelmed. As long as you are clear from the outset, you should never run into any problems. If you choose to write more, or less often that is fine. There are no real rules for this except for what you make up for yourself.

A good way to keep everything straight with e-mail, especially if you have more than one class in your building participating is to use the "subject" line in your e-mail messages. Have everyone enter the class that they are corresponding with in the "subject" line. Do this at both ends. This way you and the teacher at the other end of your messages will be able to keep all of the messages going to the correct people.

Another good way to keep things manageable is to divide your classes into groups of 3-4. Make enough groups so everyone, over the course of the year will have at least one opportunity to send and receive a message.

You can make arrangements for those small groups to comer to the gym, or other free room during recess, or other open time slot for you. If you have younger students (grade 3-4), you can set up a "form" for them fill out to aid them in coming up with their messages. An example may look like this:

Dear students in ______________________ class,

We are from _________________________________________

________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________.

Right now we are learning about ___________________ in our gym classes. One of our favorite things to do is __________________

_____________________. This is how we do it. _________________

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________.

Have you ever done anything like this in your gym?

Let us know what you are doing. We want to know if we have ever done the things you do in ____________________.

Sincerely,

_______________, _______________, ______________, _______________ in ______________________ class

Your pen pals are in ______________________________.

Their E-mail address is ___________________________.

If you have older students (5th &endash;6th grades), you may leave it more open ended. You can get a better handle on this from the classroom teacher. After this input though, the classroom teacher is no longer involved. You will send and receive all of the messages through your e-mail account.

You can organize your relationship with your e-mail pen pals any way that you want to. You could expand on topics like comparing youth league practices to physical education classes ("What drills, or lead-up games do you play at practice? Are any of these the same that you do in PE?"), to comparing physical education activities ("We are studying soccer now. One of favorite activities is _____________. What is your favorite activity in your PE class?").

You can also look for information on local high school, college or professional teams from different parts of the country. You could say something like: "Our school is near Syracuse, NY. The college basketball team there plays in the Carrier Dome. They are called the 'Orangemen.' The roof is a giant bubble. Sometimes we get to go to a game. What is the name of the college team near you? What is it called? Do you know why it is called that?"

This line of questioning allows the kids to compare different parts of the country. By asking about the origin of a team name, they are also getting into local history.

Another possibility is to utilize local history with baseball and e-mail pen pals. While there are many major league teams around the country, there are countless minor league teams. Each of these teams; major, or minor league has stories related to their history in their communities. By having your students ask questions of their pen pals about their local team, they will not only get some very interesting and educational answers, they will also be put into a position to learn more about their own local teams and their history to be able to respond to their "pals."

Now you have created a scenario where your students are not only learning from you, but from students from other parts of the country as well. Just imagine the looks on your students' faces when you show them a message from another student somewhere else in the country, that is about their physical education class. Talk about hooking your students to your program! It will not get much better than this.

All of the discussions about messages can easily take place in your daily classes. A possible outcome of these messages can be a "PE E-Mail Pen Pal Day." After collecting ideas from pen pals, you can set up a day with your classes where the lesson's focus is on what is done at the pen pals' schools. You or your students can select activities that were described in the messages. This makes their pen pals more realistic to your students. Instead of simply reading about ideas, they can now see what those ideas look like in action!

If you would like more information, just drop Tom a message.