To get a letter, send a letter!

Easy, isn’t it?

As we are studying paste tenses in Year 6, we thought it would be a good idea to send letters telling our last holidays to our friends! Yes, you have a perfect sight! Sending letters!

It is obvious that nowadays, that in this digital age we live, we are losing that special touch that handwriting brings to our lives. The teenagers live in a techy world full of laptops, smartphones, tablets, and so on…and from my point of view, we, as teachers, need to encourage the act of handwriting. I wanted them to test the meaning and the emotion of putting pen to paper and write a letter.

I firmly believe, that writing helps kids become better readers, boost their confidence and sparks their creativity. For a beginner writer, it can be difficult to start thinking on an idea to write and because of that I decided to make it fun for them and launch them an idea.

First of all we thought on the writers: who better to write a letter than to a classmate? We wrote our names on a small piece of paper and picked up a random name.

Done!

Then, topic. At the beginning it was hard to work with the children, but later, we discovered that using the past simple tense, we could write a fantastic letter telling our friends what we did on our last holidays!

Wow, we have almost finished!

Finally, we decided to include in the envelope a leaflet with specific information about our «must go list» of places in the chosen city.

I can’t believe we are ready to start sending letters!

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Now that all the work is completed, we just can wait. Soon, we all experiment the lovely feeling of spying a handwriting letter on our mailbox, and we all know about our friend’s news that day.

Remember to take a photo of you with your letter and send it to me! 😉

Writing a letter

Hello!!!

Time flies and we are almost finishing the second term, but before we get to the end, we have an important task to do!!!

As we have talked at school, in this Unit we are going to send a letter to a chosen at random friend. The pairs are already done, so now, it’s time to you to write your letters and create your leaflet.

Remember you’ll do the work with me in the classroom. But, beforehand, you should recap some information about the places to visit and the city to go.

Here you have the steps to follow. Any doubt, do not hesitate to ask me, I’ll be glad to help you!!!

To check the items I will evaluate, go to your level page, click on it, and look for the evaluation rubric I have uploaded for you. Or click the link below

6th webpage: Evaluation Rubric

Restaurant dramatic play

As you know, dramatic plays are common at school in the English subject and it can be both enormously rewarding and enjoyable for teachers as well as students.

Now, and starting earlier than never, we are going to do a restaurant dramatic play in 3rd level. I like to do this role play now because all of our children have been to restaurants and are familiar to them. Food is the main topic we are working, so I believe that the moment can’t be better.

Using plays in the language subject with young language learners can:

• Improve their speaking skills.
• Encourage creativity.
• Involve the whole class in the same activity.
• Give them the chance to act.
• Help them experiment with the language.
• Loose fear in front of the language.

Apart from that, and taking into account that our learners are young learners, we should bear in mind the following recommendations:

• Use short dialogues.
• Follow easy structures.
• Work with already known vocabulary.
• Introduce new words but not too much.
• Let them use their imagination.

Now, let’s show the materials used, but first of all we must thanks their contribution to the following helpers. For the budgets I have download the files from http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/ a fantastic website with tons of freebies. In UK all schools use their resources to work at class. Another interesting webpage I have found is https://thekindergartenconnection.com/. On it, I have found the great menus and tickets to work with students. Here you have the materials prepared for the special ocassion. 😉

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And finally, let me show you have what happened in the classroom, hope you really enjoy because we DID IT!!!!

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See you soon! And if you like the post, you know…give me a thumb up or red heart!