Pen pals in times of social media: New friends in Europe

Our new contacts with different schools in Europe offer the chance to create various projects with European students. Unfortunately, only a few students can participate in our Erasmus+ exchanges. 

However, we wanted other students to be in contact with students in Spain, France and Sweden as well. Starting in the end of 2018 we have created a pen pal project with voluntary participation in classes 7 and 8. We were positively surprised to have 80 students in our school who were excited to start writing the first letter. Many of them were really creative and even packed photos and some other small items. They were so proud to write a whole letter in English and sometimes even in Spanish or French which they only started learning a few months ago. The most important aspect is to understand each other and to learn something about students from other cultures and countries. 

Despite the digitalization all over European schools we chose an “old medium” for the written exchange. Most of the students have actually never received an actual letter before – everyone communicates via Whatsapp or Snapchat. Now we can see many happy faces when the new letters arrive.

Hopefully, they can build friendships that last a lifetime!
(Europaschule Rövershagen, Germany)