This Friday I’m assigning my four students a Postcard Project. They have to write five letters apiece, which we will mail from the school, to distant family and family friends requesting a postcard from the city/country where they live, and telling just a little bit about life there.
Students will write a short two-page research paper on any two postcards they receive. Last time I did this students got a tremendous response from all over the United States and Canada, including places like Hawaii, Trinidad, Russia, Scandanavia and a really rather risque one from Brazil, that, I uh, immediately confiscated. For the good of the children.
For students who don’t get five responses back, and prove to them how otherwise ridiculously easy it is to get responses from people when it comes to school projects, I’m asking Dopers who’d like to participate to send postcards addressed to (as I’m known at the Africentric homeschooling center I work at these days) Baba Hale’s Class, Classroom C, at Sankofa Education Support Center, 5746 Rockbridge Road, Stone Mountain, GA 30087.
Leftover cards will be used to decorate the classroom door and bulletin board and serve as an extra resource for our geography lessons throughout the year. It’s a lot more fun and meaningful than boring old lessons right out of books.
I regret I’m working so much these days (volunteering, teaching, fundraisers, curriculum planning) I can’t respond on this thread or this message board like I used to. But thanks in advance to any and all who decide to send a card. Thanks a million. Just include a quick post so I can look out for your card.
I’ll let you know how things are proceeding next some time week.
A card sent from here can take between one week and three months to arrive. Would it still be ok if it happened to be one of the late ones?
You can use it to explain to your students that a lot of Europeans put a slash in the middle of our 7’s, while Americans don’t. I read that in an American mystery novel once and thought it was absolutely cool that it was true.
While I was backpacking several years ago, I found myself in the enviable position of doing the draw for the Young Men’s Moselle District Plowing Championships. (No, really.) I wrote the numerals from 1 to 9 on a scrap of paper, put them in my hat and pulled one at a time out, much to the befuddlement of all attendant Young Men. Apparently German numerals look quite different from Australian ones. My 7 looked like a 1 to the Deutsche, and my 4 looked like a 7. Honestly, its a wonder we can communicate at all sometimes.
Sorry about my last post. Not very informative, was it? I came all the way down here to my volunteer job to use the interns’ computer and ended up getting distracted…
Minor update: One of my 10 year-olds informed me today that he’s not ten, he’s ten and two-thirds. I stand corrected.
Since getting 10 year old boys to write letters to family members is apparently the homeschooling equivalent of going to get teeth pulled without benefit of local anesthesia for fun, the letters requesting postcards didn’t get finished until earlier this afternoon and won’t be mailed out until tomorrow. But I’m making the request here again for Dopers to send their postcards to help with this unit, since I definitely want my postcards coming in before students do.
Again, the mailing address is Baba Hale’s Class, Classroom C, at Sankofa Education Support Center, 5746 Rockbridge Road, Stone Mountain, GA 30087. Feel free to post any requests, questions, concerns, suggestions.
So do I.
This is not a problem at all. This little fact can be used as teahing tool regarding relative postal delivery speeds from different parts of the world.
Thanks. The generosity of people who want to help children learn is always astounding. I’ll post when your postcard gets here.
Brooklyn is in the mail to you now. I signed it with my real name, but you will know it is from me because it has a lot of obsessive-compulsive information about Brooklyn.
Actually, I’m in the US (Texas) and I put a slash through my 7s and my Zs. So does my mother; she and I just had a conversation about this a few weeks ago.
Oh, and WRT the OP, I can send one from Texas this week, and another from Germany next week, if that’s okay. I’ll be sending postcards home from Germany anyway; adding another would be a minor task.
Askia, when you get a moment, tell us more about this school. I for one am curious about it. I’ll try to send you a postcard, though I’m a poor correspondent, and write illegibly besides.
Sorry, this is a bete noir I have about certain nationalities - UK included…)