Writing-A thank you letter
To provide product writing practice in the context of writing a thank you letter for a gift
To provide practice of language used for writing a letter in the context of thanking a friend for sending a gift
Procedure (37-45 minutes)
Ask students when was the last time they sent a gift to someone or received a gift from somebody. Show a box of gift as a realia and tell them that you received that gift from your best friend a month ago before you went on holiday. Explain them that your bestie sent you that gift for you to take with you when you went on holiday. Engage students to the context smoothly and put them into pairs for them to think about the gift.
Tell students that you will help them guess and project your own thank you letter on to the board. Explain them that you wrote a letter to your bestie for the gift and thanked her. Hand out the sample to the students as well. Tell them that they will read very quickly and see a question below. Tell them that they will read the letter quickly to find the answer to the question. They will read individually and will be put into pairs to answer the question. Ask students what they have thought the gift would be. It will not be challenging for them to find what the gift is. The idea here is to model the task they will have. After you get the answer from the students ask them how they were able to find out.
After you ask the students how they were able find out what the gift was, put them into pairs for them to discuss shortly about how to write a thank you letter. They first discuss with their pairs to get their own ideas about writing a letter. After that ask them what else they can write for the colorful parts while writing a letter. Engage them to the topic. Draw colorful arrows to write down alternative sentences or phrases. This should not be taking too long and watch out with TTT for this stage. Try to create opportunities for students to come up with ideas and explanations. Have students write down a gift that they can send to a friend to take with him/her when he/she goes on holiday. Be clear with your instructions here!! Simple and clear. Divide them into two groups and pass pink and yellow colored cut-ups to each group. After they write down a gift on the piece of paper, collect them. Make sure you have two groups, one is pink and the other one is yellow.
Give yellow colored cut-ups to the pink group, and pink colored cut-ups to the yellow group. Have them open their gifts but not tell each other what they have received. Give them the handout to write their own thank you letter for the gift they have just received. Make sure the students understand how they will be writing. Remind them that they won't name the gift in their letter, they will just use some clues to be guessed. Give them five minutes to write down and after they are done with their writing, put them into pairs to check their letters in their own groups.(Remember there is two different group!) Have students stand up and go show their letter to the other group to find out who has sent the gift. In case they might cause chaos while trying to find the person, help them if necessary.
After the students find the person they have been looking for, ask a few of them what their gift was and how they found the person. Praise students for doing a good job in their task.