Penpal program for American 5th grade class?

My little sister (5th grade) is doing a penpal program, and her teacher is looking for a classroom of Japanese children around that age for the program. She's got about 28 people in her classroom, ages ranging from nine years old to eleven years old.

I was wondering if anyone knew how to set up such a program? Her teacher's got her heart set on a Japanese class, but doesn't know how to go about organizing a program.

If anyone has any information, feel free to contact me anytime. Thank you very much for the answers!

SkyeNicole,

The teacher is seeking information from her young student's sister? Well, I'm sure it's just homework and she probably can manage if it was all up to her. But how about Board of Education, Japanese Embassy, sisiter cities for starters?

And in Japan, students don't really start learning English until they are in junior high school which is equavalent to 6-7th graders in the U.S., so she might want to look in to junior high school students in Japan unless her students are willing to learn Japanese very quickly.

Hope your sister can experience a nice exchange!

Let's not come to the conclusion quickly. Probably OP genuinely wants to help her sister and her classmates to have Japanese penpals.

As the above poster said in Japan students start studying English in junior high school (7 to 8 grades level in the US), so it is very likely Japanese kids will be at least 12 years old and older. Anyway, I thought the following might be a good place to start.

http://www.japanindiana.org/english/about_indiana.html