It's not uncommon to see two schools working together on a project. It's less common, however, to see two schools that are 6,000 miles apart working together.

But that's what happened recently to a group of fourth-graders at Phelps Luck Elementary, who partnered with fourth-graders in Sapnir, Israel, to put together a series of skits in Kamishibai, or Japanese paper theater.

The idea for the project was born last summer. Patty Phillips, a teacher at the Columbia school, had been recognized as Howard County Teacher of the Year, and as part of the award, she attended a teaching seminar at Port Discovery Children's Museum in Baltimore.

While there, she was introduced to a first-year initiative being run by Daveed Korup, a performing arts specialist at Port Discovery, and Celia Yitzhak, an art teacher and children's book illustrator from Israel.

"Patty brought back some information about the program and I thought it was a wonderful idea," Phelps Luck Principal Pam Akers said. "It was a chance to really see what our kids have in common with students from across the world."

The program consisted of four phases.

In the spring, the American and Israeli students each created a drawing of what they saw while looking out their front door. Then the two classes swapped the drawings and their foreign counterparts wrote a description and story based on the drawing.

In the winter, each student wrote a story called, "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up," and again swapped their stories. This time, their overseas counterparts made a drawing based on the writings they received.

Earlier this spring, the two classes took the project to the next level, breaking up into groups and writing brand new stories. They then created drawings to go along with those stories to be used in a Kamishibai play.

Kamishibai is a form of storytelling invented by Japanese Buddhists, in which monks used e-maki -- picture scrolls -- to convey stories with moral lessons.

After finishing the stories and drawing the necessary pictures for those scrolls, the two classes shared their stories over the Internet, using live Web cams.

'Lot of hang-ups'

The project was not without its difficulties, Korup said.

"Translation issues, an audio delay during the Web broadcast, time differences. We had a lot of hang-ups," Korup said.

But at the end of the day, Phillips said, the project was everything they'd hoped.

"This was truly a case of integrated education," she said. "Social studies, art, literature, language arts, foreign language, technology education. The kids got to experience it all with this opportunity."

Sarah Stout, a fourth-grade teacher at Phelps Luck, said she enjoyed seeing the students' enthusiasm for the project.

"They knew the basics of what they were working on, but once they realized the rest was up to them, they really got into it," she said.

Stout said she was thrilled to see the students get the chance to work with Israeli students.

"I went abroad and it was just the most amazing experience," she said. "So, for fourth-graders to get this chance is great. And they loved it."

Akers said she was thankful for the opportunity, but wasn't sure it would come again.

"They've gotten a lot out of it and it was fun," she said with a smile. "I don't know that we'll get this chance again, but we'll certainly look at any chance we get."

---

user comments (0)