Postcard Travels

​ a postcard and/or an artifact that was representative of the culture, history or environment of their special location.
During the first year each student sent out 2 letters and the second and third years they sent out just one.
As the postcards/ packages came in we read the included information and artifacts and located the location on our map.  During the first and second years the class had three paper maps on the wall outside our classroom. One was a world map, then we moved the scale a bit larger and had a US map and finally, enlarged the scale a bit more and had a state map. The postcards each were attached to the appropriate map so students could see where they had traveled.
In the second and third years of this project I incorporated a bit of technology, using Google maps to track our location and, with the help of street view, actually visit most of our locations.



​Objectives :​

 

There are a number of objectives for this project, ranging from writing, reading, learning about global communities, geography and more. It also incorporates several ISTE-T standards.
In preparation for this project students learn about letter writing formats so they can write their letter and begin the project. In the first three years I used this project I had students simply send out a form letter and missed out on an incredible opportunity for a real-life example of the need for letter-writing skills. That will be changed in the future!
As the class received postcards and packages we were able to have discussions about each location. What did they already know? What could I tell them? What did they learn about the location? Additionally, during the second few years, we used Google maps to pinpoint a specific location. With the pin markers students could easily see the relationship between where they lived and the postcard travels location. This really gave students a sense of geography and distance. During the first couple of years Google did not have a lot of street view locations available. In order to show students more about the featured location I would find web images of important buildings, environmental or geographical features of the location then show and explain them to students. In later years, I also incorporated street view, thus creating a virtual field trip. It was wonderful to hear student exclamations about how cool it was to actually see a place. Often they were surprised at how much alike foreign locations were to their own home.
Once I was able to incorporate Google maps into the project I also was able to extend student learning and connect the project to parents and relatives by embedding our custom map into our classroom webpage. Many students went home after our “field trip” and showed their parents where we had gone. Parents and students reported that they then did a little research of their own and found out new facts or images of the location. Grandparents, aunts and uncles also reported they enjoyed seeing where we had gone.

 

​Future plans/changes :

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This project has been a work in progress since its beginning in 2008. It started as a fun way to teach students a little about the world around them and has taken on a life of its own. Now that there are so many more pieces to it, I am finding that the enthusiasm of students, their postcard contacts and myself cause it to take up an almost unmanageable amount of time. Originally, students sent out two letters each. In a class of 20 students, that meant we travelled to 40 different locations! When we simply read the postcard, looked at the artifacts, had a short discussion and mapped the location there was plenty of time to move through that many places. Now that we do all of that as well as look at additional images and tour the area with Google street view, each trip takes 30-45 minutes,. Sometimes, when students are especially engaged and the discussion and questions really get moving, the trips can take an hour! As a result, I have limited the students to one letter each. Even still, finding the time to fit in 18-20 trips, usually during the second half of the year, is very difficult and I need to really evaluate how to do this in the future.
Another change that I need to evaluate is the letter writing aspect of the project. In the past I had students simply fill out and mail a form letter that I had created. It was done this way for a couple of reasons. First, the time needed to have students learn how to write a letter, write it and revise/edit it was, seemingly, monumental with second grade students. Second, at the time, I was a new teacher and my second grade curriculum did not include letter writing. Now I am teaching third grade and letter writing is included in the curriculum, so I see this as an excellent motivating opportunity for students to learn this skill. Adding a technology component to it by using Google docs will be helpful as well, allowing students to learn formatting, keyboarding and revising skills. I also could even have them share and comment on each other’s letters to make sure they are well organized and coherent. Again, however, the time commitment enters the equation. Perhaps I can see if some of this project can be incorporated with the technology/computer class lessons.
Over the three years I have been using this project I have moved from a paper map to a digital map. In the future, a combination of the two may be even better. Certainly seeing the location of each place in relation to the others and to our home is integral to student understanding of geography and the project’s goals. However, access to that is short term and dependent on student access to computers and the internet. Posting the locations on the scaled maps as I had in the very beginning allows regular review of the locations, opens an opportunity for additional evaluation of the locations and, since they are posted in the hallway, allows for even more students to have access to the learning. In the future, having both the digital maps and the paper maps will be the best way to go.
An additional thought that I have been pondering for the future of this project is to have students prepare presentations of the locations. Information they could include would be able to incorporate just about every subject. Expectations could include the distance of the location from our school, almanac information about population, size and such, cultural information that tells about a specific celebration or tradition, geographical features and so much more. The time factor, of course, would be a huge issue, however. Would students have to do this at home or in school? If they do it in school, when would I fit in time for individual students to do the research? How would I support one student at a time since the postcards generally do not appear all at once? Could I just save all of the items, have students work on them at the same time and then space out the presentations? While this could be an incredible project, I wonder if curriculum expectations would allow for the time needed to really do it justice?

 

Update:

I created this project 3 years ago and have since moved to a new school district. The Google account with the map I created for this artifact has since been shut down, so I do not have access to the actual map.