Friends in Need: Connecting to a Rural Colombian Classroom
My students need 3 camcorders to ship videos about themselves to a school without cameras in Colombia; the Colombian students will then be able to make videos to email us.
One classroom of 50 students in rural Colombia would like to connect to our Spanish classroom in North Carolina. We have collected 100 lbs of school supplies and clothes to send them, and we want to keep sharing in their lives and school experiences after the packages get there.
Our own school is only about 140 students, and only 25 of them are in Spanish I.
Most of the class is 9th graders, though we have a few sophomores and juniors. Helping others is a major motivator in our class and brings meaning to language learning. Learning Spanish has a purpose when we have friends we want to understand us and whom we want to understand.
We learned about school vocabulary from our friends' request list, and now we are going to learn how to introduce ourselves, but not just to pass a test--to meet people almost a world away from us! The Colombian students live in conditions we could only imagine, and vice versa. Video would make our shared experiences LIVE!
Our school's focus is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, but we are more than that: we are global citizens. Project-based learning is what we do, so in all classes we are constantly working towards goals we can apply to our lives and the world around us.
My Project
In North Carolina, each student will take turns with the camcorders to record a video introduction in Spanish, using language in the most meaningful way possible: to connect the world. My students will practice basic skills and speaking, perfecting their speech to be understandable for a real audience that matters to them.
Then the cameras, with the video introductions, will be packed and shipped with the supplies we collected for the Colombian school.
When they get to Colombia, the cameras will be passed around and students will enjoy personal experiences of students from the U.S. And then THEY can record messages for US! My students will benefit from speaking Spanish AND hearing/interpreting Spanish from native speakers that they already care about!
I learned about this school via a charity organization. The Colombian charity connection will e-mail the video of the Colombian students to me to share with my students, for whom Spanish will then have real voices and faces.
Donating to this project will not only bring technology to a rural Colombian town, but it will also bring true meaning to Spanish class for some North Carolinian high school students.
Giving and learning Spanish will be united in their minds, and real communication and understanding will be established between schools in two very different countries.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Sexton and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.