5^th graders find new friends California and Tennessee

5th grade writers Rosemary Trahan, Sarah McCaffery, Karizma Bowers, Tamara Roberson, Melissa Bowley, Ashley Oeser, Melissa Oeser, Stefan Lilley, Will Logan and Taylor Fleig stand in front of copies of letters the students wrote to their pen pals in Los Angeles

Two groups of fifth graders have found new friends. Through an Internet site for classroom teachers, students from Los Angeles, Cali. and Gallatin, Tenn. (a suburb northeast of Nashville) have agreed to be pen pals with the East Hill students and to correspond by way of snail-mail during this school year. Although the project has just begun, Mrs. Kolodziej's and Mrs. Gutowski's classes have already discovered a few things already about their faraway friends.

The students from L.A. live in a section of city where the population is approximately 96% Hispanic. Many of the students in the school have family members who came to L.A. from the Philippine Islands. Their school is a year-round magnet school for the sciences called Buchanan Elementary. Most of the children in this school have never seen snow!

The students from Tennessee live in a rural suburb where many families raise tobacco. Their teacher sent an interesting map and individual photographs of the children.

Both groups are very eager to write letters and get to know their newfound friends. Some area and student photographs, maps, and postcards have already been exchanged. Each group is excited to be participating in a Language Arts project where they get to make new friends and to learn about a place that is quite different from their own.