How to start a class correspondance
You can start even if you have only one machine and one e-mail address : yours!
You have the whole class write a message. The first message will be an
introduction, presenting the town, the school, the class..... And this will be part of the
school work : you will mark it, and with good, encouraging marks. Your pupils need to know
how to procede before you let them write on their own.
For example, have them all write a draft of a letter in class: the idea
that they are writing to real people who will answer will be a good insentive to produce a
written work. And they will be surprised to see they can do it!
Let them use documents to write this draft : tell them where to find
what they need in their text book, give them written examples to take ideas from, let them
use a dictionnary, let them work by twos, and help them. You go from one
group to another, correct one thing here and another there, show them where to find the
answer they need. Then you mark their work and the correction will be the putting together
of their best ideas and sentences. As you mark the papers, write down who has a good
sentence on what, and as you correct, ask them to tell the class their sentence. Try to
find something interesting in all papers, even if you have to rewrite some of it. You can
even consider sending a sentence with mistakes, to show them how correction works in
Tandem messages.
Then you have them write a paragraph in French, and for this you may
ask your teacher-partner what type of sentences or words she needs. Don't forget that this
will be the interesting part for her and her pupils.
You can also have your pupils ask questions to get some cultural
informations back.
Send this collective letter to your partner.
Then decide with her:
- the frequency of your exchanges
- check to dates of school holidays to try and cope with the gaps
- the themes you are going to deal with
- the grammatical points to be stressed
usually the cultural points come by themselves in the exchanges.