Postcard and Global Awareness Project

Postcard and Global Awareness Project

Phase 1 Postcards-Underway
The postcard project is going great!  We have made it to 5 continents, and have amazing original reading passages sent from each person.  I finished my first book of postcards, and am almost finished with the second one.  Students are always picking up the books with the atlas to find the different places.  There are 3 classes that are now experts at using the atlas, which will help them later in life with using reference material.  They can find places from the table of contents and the index.
Along with reaching 5 continents, (Oceania, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America) we have had so many people write from America.  Part of our mission while serving here in Samoa is to teach the locals about Americans to help erase any stereotypes.  So far the classes have learned about 13 of the states, the capital and 1 US territory.  All of you are doing an amazing job helping me with my mission!!!  We have been able to see the different landscapes of America, and the kids are enjoying the new vocabulary that goes with it.  (We have also had learned so much from every other country as well.)
The students have written back to most of those that have provided their addresses, and I always have a chuckle watching them try to put the stamps on.  Each student is learning a lot about the mail process, from addressing letters, watching me ride my bike to the post office with their postcards, and seeing me come back with the different new postcards.  Each student that is near the road tries to stop me to find out who their new friends are. 

Phase 2-Map Project- Underway
On Thursday in the year 6 and 7 class, we started creating our world maps.  We drew out the world on a piece of fabric and will begin paining it the following week.  As children took turns drawing each country in the world, we practiced recognizing each continent, and ocean.  We flipped through the postcard books to point on our new map the countries and continents for each of our pictures. 

Additional Learning-Students are writing e-mail messages back to those children in other schools in America that have written to them.  This year is their first time touching a computer, and they are learning about sending and receiving messages.

Ending Goal-Students will have a better understanding of the global world.

Keep sending the postcards!  We love receiving them!

(Pictures are of a year 7 student writing his first e-mail, year 7 and their map after day 1, year 6 drawing an outline of their map, year 6 and their map after day 1 of drawing, year 5 students identifying vocabulary from the postcard picture)