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100th Day Celebrations
Sharie Stelzel, an ELL teacher
from Wharton, Texas, tells about an international Internet celebration
of the 100th day of school.
By Sharie Stelzel
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 his year, students
all over the United States and the world took part in a100th Day Celebration on the
Internet by sending and receiving e-mail messages to each other. The 100th day refers
to the hundredth day of school, and students around the world celebrated this day in a
variety of ways. To learn about the different celebrations, and about other schools in
the world, students shared their experiences with each other through e-mail. This is
the story of just one of the schools that participated in that project.
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Sharie's students heard from classes around the world for their 100th Day project.
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 y
English Language Learners (ELL) classes at C.G. Sivells Elementary School
enjoyed participating in the 100th Day Celebration that took place between
December 1997 and March 1998. My 16 first grade students, twelve second
grade students, and five third grade students sent e-mail messages to
all 50 states in the U.S. and about 10 countries around the world. The
e-mail message told each recipient about the class and what the class
was planning to do to celebrate the 100th day of school.
In return, the ELL classes received 153
e-mail messages, from 44 states and eight countries. New York schools
sent the most e-mail messages in the U.S. group, and Canada sent the
most messages in the international group. We also heard from Japan,
Germany, Finland, Romania, Australia, South Africa, and Spain.
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he classes
wrote that their school, Sivells Elementary, was located in Wharton, Texas, which
is about 60 miles southwest of Houston, Texas and about 60 miles from the Gulf of
Mexico. It was important to tell our correspondants where the school was
located, because each participant class posted a map that marked where all the
e-mails messages had been sent from. My classes had two maps and displays. One
map marked how many messages came from each state that responded, and the other
map marked the countries around the world that responded.
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Students who participated in the international Internet celebration on the 100th day
of school stand in front of their classroom computers.
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he
ELL classes told the 100th Day keypals about their 100th day project,
and explained what would be done to celebrate the 100th day. For their
project, they had four stations, each with four tables, where they used
objects to count various ways to 100. At station one, the students had
to count the objects by twos; at two, they counted by fives; at three,
by 10s; and at four, they counted the objects by ones, and put them
into groups of 25, to make one hundred objects. Some of the objects
the students brought from home to use at the stations included: rice,
beans, mini-marshmallows, marbles, M&M's, Skittles, pretzel sticks,
cotton balls, Q-tips, pebbles, Froot Loops, pennies, and others. The
students rotated through the stations, and through all four tables in
each station, so that everyone was able to count every kind of object,
and have the opportunity to count to 100 in many different ways.
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he
classes also received messages from the other schools that told what
they did to celebrate, and their stories were interesting too. One class
in North Carolina had a cake with one hundred lit candles, whose smoke
set off their fire alarm! After the fire drill, the class laughed about
their experience. An e-mail message from Ohio told about another ELL
class that had 16 students who spoke 14 different languages! That class
celebrated 100th Day with a food tasting party of foods from their native
countries.
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This 100th Day project was a wonderful experience for all of my classes.
They learned that there are ELL classes all around the world.
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his
100th Day project was a wonderful experience for all of my classes.
They learned that there are ELL classes all around the world. One group
from South Africa wrote about all the languages that are spoken in their
class, including Zulu. A class from Fire Island, New York wrote that
their ELL class that included Native American dialects, and still another
class from Alaska wrote about the Inuit Eskimos. All of the messages
were very interesting; using the Internet helped open up the world to
the students who participated in all the fun.
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Look at some interesting Internet sites for ELL!
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A few picks by the SCRTEC staff:
Common
Errors. This page has some of the most common errors in English.
It's not just for ELL either! Take note!
Dave's ESL Cafe. This site has literally hundreds of
things to do and gets daily visitors from around the world. Many links are especially for
your students.
ESL Lesson Plans. This page is maintained by the
Internet TESL Journal, and contains
links to lessons and activities, many of which use technology.
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Sharie Stelzel is an ELL teacher
in Wharton, Texas. Read more about this author.
Teacher Testimony authors
are nominated by people like you. Send nominations to the editor.
© 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 SCR*TEC.
This page is Bobby
Approved.
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