Fernando M. Reimers et al.

7. Who makes the decision to buy things in the house? Where do they
buy things?

8. Does the student work at home and help with daily chores, or is
someone else responsible for chores?

Each team will be assigned a children’s book based on the country it picked.
The following are databases of age—appropriate books and stories from across
the world that the students may pick a book from:

0 http://www.unc.edu/~rwilkers/title.htrn,

0 http://resources.primarysource.org/content.php?pid=533448£sid=
390913

0 http://www.eslstation.net/theREALWF/Folktale%20Links.htm

After the very first interaction with their pen pals, the teams will maintain a
video journal and answer the following questions:

1. What are their expectations about how this person looks or behaves?

2. What were their responses to their first encounter with this new
person? Were they scared, excited, happy, or indifferent? Why or
why not?

3. What were their beliefs about people in that part of the world, and
what are their beliefs now?

4. How are their lives and the lives of children in those countries simi—
lar or different?

At the very end of the activity (or maybe even later in the year, depending
on whether these interactions continue or are terminated after two weeks),
students will look back at some of their reflections on their interactions with
people from other cultures and seek to understand whether their percep—
tions have changed. (Note that this could be a very powerful learning experi-
ence for the students and thus could require scaffolding from the teacher.)

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