Teaching student how to write a letter is an excellent way to improve student writing skills. Although letter writing is becoming less and less common these days with the increase in technology and email usage, writing a letter is a great way to have students practice their writing skills.
Instructional Objective for Letter Writing
This lesson can be used for elementary students learning to write a letter, or for students in a life skills class. The student will read a trade book at an appropriate reading level and choose one of the characters to write a letter from/to. The letter will include the greeting, a main body paragraph of at least 4 sentences, a closing and a signature.
Instructional Sequence for Writing a Letter
Pre-instructional Phase:
Choose a book that is at the student’s level, or chose a book to read aloud to the students. Review necessary parts of a sentence with the students including Capital Letters, Punctuation, and a complete thought. Explain that a paragraph will have 4-5 good sentences.
Instructional Phase:
After reading the book, discuss the story with the students, and decide who they will write a letter from or to. Students must decide for themselves whether they will write the letter from a character or to a character. Write the parts of a letter on the board and review them with the class: greeting, main body, closing and signature.
Post-Instructional Phase:
Once the students have finished discussing the parts of a letter and decided who to write the letter from/to, allow ample time for them to write the letter. Providing a handout with lines for where each part of the letter is to be written may be helpful to students with a writing disability. This can be accomplished by drawing lines on a plain piece of paper, or creating the form on a computer.
Summative Assessment in Letter Writing Activity
When grading each letter, decide if the letter was written from the point of view of someone in the book or is written to someone in the book? Does the letter contain each necessary part? (greeting, body paragraph, closing, and signature) Are all the sentences complete? (capital letter, complete thought, and punctuation) These three pieces must all be included in order for the student to receive a passing grade.
After completing this lesson with your students, consider assigning a letter writing activity for homework as follow up. Having the students write another letter right away will help them practice their skills, and ensure that they will remember the parts of a letter. Going over the letters that the students write during student conferences can be an excellent way to correct any problems that the students have.
Learn more tips to effectively teach writing.
Jennifer Wagaman - Jennifer is a mother of 2 and has both public, private and administrative experience in the education field.
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