E-mail project gets 2,500 responses from around the world
Erin Peavornick was looking for a fun way to use technology and Pennsylvania’s academic standards in her classroom when she came across an idea for an electronic mail project from a teacher in Illinois. A teacher at Lafayette School in the Uniontown Area School District, Peavornick and colleagues Barb Mildren and Melissa Mathias joined forces for what became a creative way to combine several class subjects. They were unprepared for the response when they sent 25 e-mail messages to friends and family, asking for information about their hometowns to share with students.
“From Nov. 14 to Dec. 14, we got back about 2,500 e-mails from everywhere,” Peavornick said. “About 25 percent came from military personnel overseas and in the U.S. A lot of the military wrote details of the country and what they thought of the culture. What we got, we plotted on a map. We got something from every state and many countries.”
Peavornick is a Title 1 teacher who focuses on computers, reading and math with fifth-grade students. Mildren teaches fifth-grade social studies and math and Mathias teaches fifth-grade science and language arts.
Their students are getting ready for the first time to take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test in math and reading in the spring.
The tests are based on the state’s academic standards, which include critical thinking skills that the teachers were able to incorporate into the e-mail project.
Mildren said that in addition to plotting the locations of the responses on a large map and graphing data, she incorporated into her math lessons the process of explaining answers that is used on the PSSA tests. She said she also had the opportunity to give the students an open-ended math problem, like the type used on the PSSA test, when one of the youngsters asked her if they could expect 1,000 or more e-mails. The class of 20 students was divided into four groups with 32 e-mails a day for three days, the students decided they could expect the 1,000 and more. She said they used the information to further figure mean, averages, modes and median.
Mildren said the project was launched in conjunction with National Geography Week, and she started using the responses in geography lessons.
Mathias said for her part of the project, she worked with the students on research of the countries identified in the e-mails.
She used a projector and laptop computer in the classroom and found information with assistance of an encyclopedia Web site that even included the national anthems of the countries.
“I narrowed down the research, helped them organize the information and gave them a model of what they needed to write,” she said.
She directed the students to write an introduction, detailed paragraphs and a conclusion about what they learned from the research, and then she graded the writings according to the rubric method used by the PSSA.
Some of the students’ work is displayed in the school hallway outside Mathias’ and Mildren’s classrooms.
Fifth-graders Diamond Dorsey and Tori Kozak talked about reports they completed based on the e-mails the school received. Dorsey chose England as her topic, while Kozak selected Italy. Although the assignment focused on the language arts with an essay, the students added drawings of the country, with its main cities marked, as well as a flag.
“I thought it (England) would be cool, because my aunt’s from there. She lives in the U.S. now,” Dorsey said. “We talked (in class) about traditions and foods that they eat.”
Dorsey said the most interesting fact she learned about England is that the game cricket is popular. She said the e-mail from England that sparked her interest was descriptive, but she learned much more about the country from extra research for the project.
Saying she was interested in Italy because her stepmother was born there, Kozak said she learned much about the country. She mentioned the weather and population and said what was most interesting to her was Italy’s shape.
“It’s shaped like a boot and has very many land forms,” she said.
Kesha Brake described one of the colorful poster board graphs she and other students created with information from the e-mails.
“I learned about some other cultures,” she said. “We had a long one from Scotland and France. They told us about the foods they eat and what they do and special holidays and some of the clothes they wear.”
She said the group of four students that she was part of concluded on their graph that the most e-mails they logged were from New York (13), and Pennsylvania came in next at 12. Besides Scotland and France, Brake noted her group also charted a response from Japan.
Art came into play with the projects the students described, but Peavornick also noted music became an element when a principal from a school in Maine sent the students an original song and sheet music, and Mildren said foreign language was added when someone sent a response in French that another teacher was able to translate.
The teachers received and read the e-mails and then shared them with the students.
They said they enjoyed the project and were amazed by the number of responses as well as the kindness of the respondents. They got as many as 280 on one day and attributed some of the volume to Uniontown philanthropist Robert E. Eberly and Brownsville Mayor Norma Ryan, who helped forward the teachers’ message.
The project technically ended Dec. 14, but Peavornick said she has still received 20 to 30 e-mails since then.
The teachers all said they would do the project again, although they learned a few lessons themselves.
“When we do it next year, we will limit it to a week,” Peavornick said.