West Virginia Coal - Pen Pals

Grade Level - 5th grade, Thomas Paine
Teacher of Lesson - Beth Anderson
Approximate Time - 30 minutes

Objectives:

  1. Students will write a formal letter, using all appropriate conventions.
  2. Students will decide what issue is most important for them to learn from a West Virginian native.
  3. Students will know more about a rural mining town and its inhabitants, including city businesses and services.

Materials:

  1. Envelope for all of our letters.
  2. Students will provide their own pencil and paper to write with.

Procedures:

  1. Before anyone in the class starts writing, I will discuss with the class what kinds of questions are appropriate for the letters we will be writing. We will look at our chart of questions we want to know for ideas. "Do they talk like they do in Kentucky?" becomes a "should not" question, whereas "Have you ever been in a coal mine?" becomes a "should" question.
  2. I will begin a mock letter on the board (or overhead), deliberately making mistakes to see if the students catch them. Some mistakes I will make include misspellings, poor punctuation, and "should not" questions. As a class, we will go back through my letter and make the necessary changes.
  3. Next, I will show them how I will address the envelope. Because this is such a small community, there is no street address. This will then allow me to explain a little more about the community. We will discuss the differences between a town so small there is no grocery store, and Urbana which has three all in the same area.
  4. Once the envelope is addressed, I will discuss with the class items they need to include in their letter. They will each be required to ask atleast one question, as well as telling a little bit about themselves. I will remind them to write a letter as interesting as a letter that they would want to receive.
  5. After I have given specific letter requirements, the class will write rough drafts of their letters. I will walk around the classroom helping the students with punctuation, spelling, and any other questions they might have. I will also make sure that they are fulfilling the requirements of things to include in the letter.
  6. After the students have completed their rough drafts, they will trade with a partner to check for grammar and content. Once again they will be reminded that the letter should be something that they would want to receive. I will tell them that I will be reading through them, so if they don't want me to read it, it shouldn't be in the letter.
  7. The students will then rewrite the letters or make the necessary changes and put them in the envelope.
  8. If resources permit, we will take a picture of the class in the room, and then a picture of the class outside on the playground. These pictures will be included in the envelope, with an explanation in my letter to the teacher.

Evaluation:

I will be informally evaluating them as I walk around the classroom. I will read through their letters before I seal the envelope. I will check for grammar and content. They will also receive points for creativity and extra effort put into the letter. The more they share about themselves, the better. Any pictures they want to add would also be a bonus.

Changes or revisions I would make:

This lesson plan went along quite smoothly. Once I started talking about the area where these students lived, my class came alive with questions. They really enjoyed finding about the personal side of the stories. The students also got excited about sending our pen pals pictures of themselves on the playground.
However, there were some students who didn't put forth the effort on the content of the letter like I know they could have. There were other students who after revision still had many grammatical errors. That was very frustrating to me because I thought I had made my directions very explicit about correcting their work. All of the students really enjoying using the computers in the classroom, so that could have been a way to help them with some of the spelling errors that occurred. It also would have allowed students to make more revisions without getting frustrated. Some of the students who didn't put forth any effort on the content would have been so excited about being on the computer that they would have spent more time writing a letter.
I was also excited to hear that the class in West Virginia was working on getting an internet connection. If that was to occur, we could have done our correspondence over e-mail and acquainted children with those services that are available. There would have to be revisions considering how to split up time on the computer and how I would make sure that each student was using the programs properly.
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