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Teacher Resources by Grade
|1st - 2nd||3rd - 4th|
|5th - 6th||7th - 8th|
|9th - 10th||11th - 12th|
Launching Family Message Journals
|Grades||K – 2|
|Lesson Plan Type||Standard Lesson|
|Estimated Time||Three 40-minute sessions|
MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
- A booklet or notebook to be used as a journal. Lined paper with an unlined block at the top (for illustrations) works well in the beginning.
- Back-up people to reply if a child's family members don't. (The letter and pressure from children make this a rare occurrence, but there are always one or two families who cannot reply regularly. In this case, a student teacher in the school, a special subject teacher, the principal, or librarian are good options.)
Grades K – 12 | Student Interactive | Writing & Publishing Prose
The Letter Generator is a useful tool for students to learn the parts of a business or friendly letter and then compose and print letters for both styles of correspondence.
- Choose the activity, book, or experience about which children will write their first two messages. This could be a book read aloud, a science inquiry, a social studies lesson, a school assembly, the experience of the first day at school, making new friends, or any other topic drawing on school experiences.
- Choose a topic for the demonstration message that you'll compose for students.
- Prepare and photocopy the Family Letter. Have it translated into families' home languages as necessary.
- Test the Letter Generator on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.