Friendly Letter Writing Unit of Study

Over the summer Kate and I planned out a short unit of study on friendly letter writing for our students. We re-grouped today since we’re launching it tomorrow. Here’s the plan as it stands right now.

DAY 1: Writers learn about the different kinds of letters and the purpose of letter writing.
(SHOW students different forms of letters.)
DAY 2: Writers have an audience and a purpose in mind when they craft letters.
DAY 3: Smart writers choose an audience to write to because they really want to share their news, feelings or ideas.
DAY 4: Writers learn about the different parts of a letter and places for those parts on paper (greeting, date, body, closing, and signature). Writers realize that they ask questions when they write their letter.
DAY 5: Writers structure friendly letters that contain multiple paragraphs and are organized by topics.
DAY 6: Writers revise a letter so it contains relevant and specific information.
DAY 7: Writers edit their letters for clarity, ensuring that they’ve used proper grammar, mechanics, and spelling.
DAY 8: Writers complete their letter and prepare to send it into the world.
(Work on envelopes.)

Since we created these teaching points, I’ve chatted with Christina and got her agree to have her students to be pen pals with my students. YEA! Hence, I have to make some changes to this unit since we know the audience that my students are going to write to.

I printed out a bunch of emails and will be distributing them to my students as a packet of touchstone texts so they can get an idea about what electronic letters look like. I’m trying to find some handwritten letters (remember those!?!??) to duplicate as well.