A Reading Bridge:  
High School Students use E-Mail to Correspond with a Third
Grade Classroom

In Virginia, a telecommunications project which taps the
talents and strengths of "at-risk" students in the ninth grade
is fostering and nurturing literacy.  Students at Waynesboro
High School in Waynesboro, Virginia, are assuming roles of
characters in popular children's books, such as Bunnicula by
Deborah and James Howe and Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard
and Florence Atwater.  Through an on-line conference
established on Virginia's Public Education Network (Virginia's
PEN), third grade students at Burnley Moran Elementary School
in Charlottesville, Virginia, are posing questions to the
RcharactersS in these books.  Special network accounts with the
charactersU name have been created to allow the identities of
the high school students to remain anonymous.  The third grade
students choose the character to whom they wish to write by
making a selection from the Virginia's PEN Elementary Books
conference menu.

The teachers involved in this project are finding that writing
for real audiences encourages students to write with greater
depth, and accuracy and style have become issues with a
purpose.  Spelling and punctuation are no longer a contrived
exercise in grammar books as students write responses to the
third graders' questions.  At first, the responses of the
characters were terse and direct.  To encourage a
conversational tone, the third grade teacher sent pictures of
her students.  The high school students then began picturing
the third graders as they wrote the responses for their
characters and the responses became more personal and
conversational.  The students also compared their responses to
those of Willie Wonka (portrayed by an adult volunteer) and
discovered that Willie Wonka's responses looked more like a
real conversation. As students gained confidence in their
writing skills and experience with electronic communications,
conversations began to emerge. 

This project encourages both the high school and elementary
students to engage in reading and writing activities in a
risk-free environment.  Few high school students willingly read
a book for third graders, even though it may be at their
instructional level.  In this context, the students are free
from peer pressure and embarrassment, and by participating in
this project, students are increasing their literacy skills and
self-esteem as well. 

Through this project, cross-curricular aspects have emerged.
The ninth grade students, many of whom are enrolled in
vocational classes, have built a rabbit cage for the character,
Bunnicula, and have created a bean bag game featuring a
four-foot penguin.  Students are also in the process of
creating a hypermedia program on Bunnicula and are researching
vampires, the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Carpathian Mountains
for inclusion in the computer program.

For more information, contact: 
Jeradi Hochella 
Waynesboro High School  
Waynesboro, VA 22980
Internet e-mail: jhochell@rvgs.vak12ed.edu  
.