Exchange Photographs:  Have students select a few scanned or original photographs of smiles -- their own, their pets, their families, and their friends etc. - to exchange with their partner via teacher email account or the postal service. Include explanations of the photographs' content - who is smiling and why?

Gratitude Journals:  Students also compose gratitude journals about the things or actions that make them smile. Ask students to write an entry in a notebook each day for a month. In the entries, students should describe the event or action that made them happy or grateful. (Teachers should determine how lengthy they want entries to be.) Each week, ask students to select and share with their classmates and their partner classroom, one entry from their journals. Each student can type his or her entry into a single, comprehensive email message containing several entries to be sent to the partner classroom. Or, students may submit a neat, written copy of their entries to be mailed as a package to the partner classroom. If possible, exchanging email messages via teacher email accounts is the preferred method.

Remind students this project emphasizes humility, acceptance and understanding of their international and domestic peers. Ask students to be considerate of different lifestyles and the value of different experiences. As exchanges of information with the partner classroom occur and classroom discussions ensue, students often realize they are grateful for the lifestyle and privileges of their country, homes or school. They also gain a better cultural understanding of peers in another part of the world.