For this part of the project we looked at a typical school day here in Room 3 in Edmund Rice Primary School, Tramore, and compared it with a typical school day in Mrs. Nelson’s room in Raymond Maquith Elementary School, Galesburg, Illinois.The pupils first wrote about their day with their own observations. We them looked at a typical day here in Tramore and compared it with a typical day from the accounts of the pupils from Galesburg.

Our first observation was how early our keypals in Galesburg get up. Sami is the earliest riser, while Jamie stays in bed until 7.05. Most of us here in Tramore do not get up until after 8.00 AM. The main reason why our American pals get up so early is that they have to get a bus to school and the fact that their school day begins at 8.10 AM, an hour earlier than our start time which is 9.10 AM.All of our keypals come by bus except for Sami, who comes by car.

Here in Tramore, three boys come by bike, two walk, and Richard gets a lift, as he lives furthest away from the school.

Our school begins exactly one hour later than Galesburg. We would not like to start school at 8.10 AM. Most of us would be half-asleep at that time. We also think that we would be coming to school in the dark in winter, which would not be a good idea. Even though they start an hour earlier, they finish fifteen minutes after us, at 3.15 PM.

Here is a typical timetable from both schools:

                    Tramore                       Galesburg

        9.10    School begins             8.10   School begins

        9.30     Work begins              8.30     Work begins

       10.30    Break-time                10.00     Break-time

       10.40    Class                        10.15     Class

       12.30    Lunch                       11.05      Lunch

       1.10      Class                       12.00      Class

       3.00      School ends             3.15       School ends

You can find out about what goes on on a typical school day by reading our reports.

In Tramore, we are at school for five hours and fifty minutes, but leaving out the morning break (ten minutes) and lunch time (forty minutes), we are in school for five hours and ten minutes each day for 183 days a year.

In Galesburg they are in school for seven hours and five minutes, but leaving out the morning break (fifteen minutes) and lunch time (fifty-five minutes), they are in class for five hours and fifty-five minutes. So our friends in America are in class for forty-five minutes more per day.

We start each morning with a prayer, but our friends in Galesburg go to religion classes outside school hours. Each morning they make a pledge (a promise) to the U.S. flag and their President.

What we call History, Geography and Science, they call Social Studies.

We have PC computers in our school and in Galesburg they use Apple Mac computers. Everything was going grand until they tried to send us photographs of their life outside school. We could not open them here. We tried everything. Our teacher sent for help but we still couldn’t open them. That is why there are very few pictures in their section of the site. They were taken but we just couldn’t open them. These are the problems you have when you are using different types of operating systems. Mrs. Nelson was very disappointed as she said they were very nice pictures.

In our class we have old machines. We have "one for everybody in the audience". In Galesburg, each pupil has a "Smartboard" which is like a keyboard, on which they write their stories. They then plug into the main                                           computers and send them to us.