News Hub

JUNE 10, 2025— An Intermediate School classroom recently made a connection with classrooms several states and time zones away!

Ms. Wootton’s 5th graders took part in a project known as “The Great Mail Race,” which involved writing and receiving letters from other school districts.

The effort started when her class received a letter from a school in Kahuku, Hawaii. The school told Ms.Wootton’s class they selected them because they are also the Red Raiders.

From there, the class was challenged to write a letter to another class somewhere in the States. They began researching and filling out a questionnaire form based on our region, adding some of their favorite locations and destinations in New York.

The original letter and questionnaire from Kahuku Elementary School 

The students worked together to find one school in all of the other states to send mail to in hopes that they would return the questionnaire.

They eventually received questionnaires from Petersburg Elementary School in Petersburg, West Virginia, Hanover High School in Mechanicsville, Virginia, Salamanca Intermediate School in Salamanca, New York, and Lewisville Elementary in North Carolina!

Questionnaire from Hanover High School

Some of Ms. Wootton’s students took it a step further and got creative by making a slideshow of all the schools they sent mail to so they could learn about the other states and see what their schools look like!  The presentation included pictures and facts about the states in which the other schools were located. 

“We have had so much fun with this project and are hopeful that some more letters will come through,” Wootton said.

Carter, one of the students who worked on this project, said it was a fun and interesting project to work on because they learned more about what life was like for students at the other schools. Another student, Delany, said she was surprised to learn that students at the school in Hawaii had to walk outside to get to their other classes.

“It was cool that out of everyone [in the country], we got the one letter,” Carter said. 

Carter and Delany said they would happily do the project again and recommended other classrooms do the same.