To give our students the opportunity to share with a global community, each second grade class is involved in telecommunication projects. Our intention is to have our students experience dialoguing with peers from around the world. Students will learn the process of communicating electronically as they gain an appreciation of other cultures.

All three classes have participated in the Mascot Swap Project, where they are exchanging mascots with a partner school to broaden their language skills as they wrote about the mascot's adventures. Since our first experience was such a positive one, we chose to particvipate a second year in this project.

Autumn Poetry, our first venture into moderating an on - line project ourselves received a great response. Young students from around the global celebrated the beauty of autumn by writing and sharing original poems about the season. We encouraged all participants to read the poetry which was published on to our site and send e-mail messages, sharing positive comments about the work.

Toys of the Future was second grade's way of celebrating the changing of the century. Second and third grade students became toy inventors by designing toys for the year 2000. Each participating class wrote a description of their toy invention. Their work was posted on a class page on our web site. Classes were encouraged to read the toy descriptions submitted by other schools and to send e-mail messages that include positive comments and any additional ideas they had for a particular toy.

With Creative Dinosaurs second grade is sharing with the Internet world a successful project they have done for years. Students from participating schools will invent a dinosaur by using a combination of Greek prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Each participating class will draw a picture of the dinosaur and write a creative story about it. Their work will be posted on a class page on our web site. Classes are encouraged to browse the drawings and read the stories submitted by other schools and to send e-mail messages that include positive comments.

We are excited about these telecommunication ventures. So please take some time to read about our experiences as described on our web pages.