Looking for Spanish speaking class to collaborate with!

I am a 6th grade teacher (ages 10-12) in Maine. This fall I will be sharing approximately 40 students with a fellow teacher (core content subject areas of English Language Arts, Science, Social Studies and Math). Our students do not typically take a foreign language until 7th grade, however we have arranged for local college students to come in once a week and teach some basic Spanish. We are trying to expose our students to other languages and cultures and choose Spanish as it is a widely spoken language and one that we feel plays a vital role in the global community.

We are searching for a class interested in a class interested in working on collaborative projects with us throughout the year (our academic year runs September through June). We already have a project developed that explores the defintion of culture that would allow the students to get to know each other. We are anxious to get this off of the ground and would love to hear from you! - Tricia

Tags: classroom, collaborative

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on July 23, 2012 at 3:38pm

What a great plan! Your state has approved student email (free through ePals) to be used in exchanges like this one.

The student email accounts would have names like LindaL@maine.epals.com or LindaL3@maine.epals.com.

You can sign up for your free student accounts at http://www.epals.com/join You can get a couple of "test" student accounts to see how this works before school starts, then get your accounts as soon as you know student names in your class.

Also, if you are still looking for a Spanish-speaking classroom, thousands of teachers in Latin America and Spain are available for cultural exchanges online through ePals. (Also free to find a partner and free to use the cultural projects.) After you join, you can have a teacher profile and find other teachers.

For example, here's an ePals teacher of gr. 6 in Chile with 36 students. (You have to be in your ePals account to contact her.)

Cinthia Balague

Region: Chile, South America Project Language: English, Spanish

Collaboration:Email

About my classroom:

We are 36 students in the 6th grade, we are learning English. We want to improve our writing skill and meet new friends.

posted: July 12, 2012

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Only downside is that their spring semester ends in December, so you would have to get another class in January (from Mexico or Spain perhaps.) They would be back in school for a new fall semester in March.

If you want to learn more about the free offerings of ePals, sign up for a free webinar: http://bit.ly/ePalsGCwebinar

Good luck! It will be an amazing experience for you and your students!

(ePals even has a couple of easy projects for you to start with.)

Chile is a highly developed country with widespread internet access and a lot of teachers of English as a second language, so it's a pretty interesting match for your students. They have a coast with lots of cold water (from Antarctic waters) and lots of fishing in the economy, so that might be interesting to compare to Maine's economy. The Chilean ESL teachers recently had a workshop on using ePals, so lots of them are interested in finding matches!

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Permalink Reply by Tricia Pfluger on August 16, 2012 at 12:47pm

Thank you for your response! I actually also posted this on epals. I have had a few teachers contact me with some possibilities. I am excited about the possibilities if it works out!