One of the simplest projects to do is with the “What’s the weather like?” theme.  It’s really simple:

1) Everyday one (upper year) child has to take a picture of the weather outside.

2) They email this to the partner school along with a quick sentence e.g “Today it’s rainy”. (Either look on the Genki English forum or epals.com to find partners)

3) They also print out the picture received  from the partner school.

4) Now in class instead of just saying “What’s the weather like?” you can also ask “What’s the weather like in Detroit?”  or Lima or Cairo or Kuala Lumpur or wherever you want to exchange with.

After a year you end up with a lot of pictures and data you can use in other subjects, such as calculating mean temperatures in maths or effects of mountains, ocean currents or altitude in geography.  Plus of course it’s lots of fun for the kids!

Usually the kid whose turn it is to send the report goes to the computer room to do it, but you can even email pictures from some mobile phones these days.  Then again this is the Web 2.0 era, so instead of pictures why not take a mini video everyday, it’s easy to do with a digital camera, this way the kids get to talk real English and it’s really easy to upload it to Youtube, for example Flossy has just uploaded this great video….

What’s the weather like in Austria?

When are you starting the project in your class?