William Law CE Primary School

Werrington, Peterborough

Mr Davies' Year 5 class

St Barnabas CE Primary School

Warmley, Bristol

Mrs Angus' Year 5 class

 
Final Thoughts

William Law: As a class we have enjoyed the creative work involved and linking to another school. It was fun doing the collages and researching and sketching around the village. We have enjoyed sending e-mails to our partner school and hearing back their reports and looking at the photos. It was interesting to find out that our areas are similar.

St Barnabas: The project has encouraged us to get out in our local environment, and really look closely at the houses and buildings we pass every day. It was fascinating to discover links between the houses today and their history; one house used to be the local post office and another, a shop that sold oil. The variety of styles and periods of houses in one road was amazing and the art work produced showed how carefully we had observed the buildings. We tried to create the perspective of looking down the street.

St Barnabas students sketching

More from the St Barnabas students: We have been paired up with a school near Peterborough. We have been writing emails to each other. It was good fun e-mailing each other. We e-mail in the classroom or in the ICT suite. We looked at some photos that was good fun. They sent us some and then we sent them some. When we sent some of the e-mails with attachments they didn't get through because we used too much memory!!! After working with our partner school we have realised that the houses in Peterborough are in some ways like the houses in Bristol. Overall we have really enjoyed working with our partner school and would really like the partner school to be our pen-pals, as we really enjoyed sending e-mails to them. Sorry the project wasn't longer!

Teachers: The link with our partner school was a great motivator and gave a purpose to the emails. We enjoyed corresponding and spotting similarities and differences between the two areas. The time constraints of the project helped us to focus and move on to the different stages of the project. We just ran in to some technical hitches emailing large files but we're proud of the work we've put together.

Children practised 'live' ICT skills through E mail and PowerPoint and could see first hand the purpose of their writing. At William Law we collapsed a week of afternoons to do the work, which the children enjoyed. They also input into the final display of the work deciding how they wanted it to be arranged. We would like to continue our partnership for future correspondence, maybe linking as email partners.