Grade 8 French Students & Correspondents Discover Historic Alexandria

By Virginie Rampon, Middle School French teacher

On October 21, Grade 8 French students and their correspondents from Collège Sévigné in Paris spent the day in beautiful Old Town Alexandria, VA. As usual, we spent the morning discovering Alexandria's history as part of a scavenger hunt created by Collège Sévigné teacher Marl Wallace and me. The goals of this mini-adventure are for the Collège Sévigné students to reinforce their American History curriculum and also for WIS students to take leadership in the groups. The day was a success because students built connections and partnership during the route through Alexandria's main streets. Groups navigated with varing degrees of strategy on a paper map (Google Maps were forbidden!), but in the end every group found the solutions. Of course the best part for the students was the lunch, free of supervision!

The Middle School French department would like to express gratitude towards our Sévigne counterparts because we were able to create a very positive and constructive work relationship. We'd also like to thank Middle School Principal Randy Althaus and Middle School Assistant Principal Kristin Gillilian for their incredible suppport of this full day in Alexandria and more generally for organizing the exchange program. And of course we’d like to thank our students and their families for their support during the exchange program.