Grade 3 — English Language Arts: Composing Friendly Email Letters

Overview

Students learn the components of a friendly email letter and use word processing and email to compose and send friendly email letters.

Activate

Over several days, as a class, students listen to and actively participate in retrieving reading and discussing friendly email letters.[Gather and Make Sense]  Identify and discuss the common components of email letters that makes their reading interesting and finding information in them easy. Introduce school/divisional safety guidelines for sending / retrieving email. [Ethics and Responsibility]

Teacher Tips:
Note for example the following components: descriptive subject in the subject line, opening and closing greetings, use of paragraphs to separate ideas, etc.
Ask volunteers (e.g., parents, older students, administrators) to send friendly email letters to the class. Share the expected components with the participating writers.
Consider setting up an Internet keypal exchange in advance of starting this learning experience.

Suggestions for Assessment:
Observation: Assess students' active listening and participation using ELA BLM-54 or a similar resource.
Note whether students recall the division’s acceptable use policy [Ethics and Responsibility].

Acquire

In small groups or pairs, students retrieve, listen to and actively participate in reading several friendly email letters to determine common components. [Gather and Make Sense] With input from the class, using a word processor, develop and revise a template  for a friendly email letter. [Collaborate, Produce to Show Understanding] Remind students of safety guidelines when creating the template [Ethics and Responsibility].

Teacher Tip:
Consider setting up an Internet keypal exchange in advance. Consider collaborating with a local school.

Suggestions for Assessment:
Observation: Note student contribution and participation.

Apply

Students establish authentic purposes for writing email letters, such as writing to an online keypal to find information about them or their community. Students use the template for friendly email letters to draft one [Produce to Show Understanding].

Teacher Tip:
Some examples also include thank you letter and letters of invitation.

Students revise and edit with a partner using the Five-Step Revising and Editing Checklist. [Produce to Show Understanding, Collaborate] Students send their email letters, check for a return email, then prepare and send a reply. [Communicate, Collaborate].

Teacher Tips:
Consider composing the email using a word processor, then copy and paste into an email program or send word processing file as attachment. For more information on Five-Step Strategy for Revising and Editing, please see p. 226 K to 8 ELA Strategies.

Suggestions for Assessment:
Peer Assessment: Students use the Five-Step Revising and Editing Checklist to revise their partner's email letters.
Sample: Use the students' completed Five-Step Revising and Editing Checklist to assess their effectiveness at editing and revising.
Observation: Note whether students are applying established safety guidelines when emailing information to a keypal [Ethics and Responsibility].
Conference: Conference with students to review their revised email letters for format and content [Reflect].