I found a great mentor text "Dear Peter Rabbit" during the letter genre presentation. Every letter within the book represents a different point of view of 2 upcoming events between characters of popular fairytales (Goldilock's Birthday party & Housewarming Parties for the 3 little pigs). Each letter was written in a friendly letter format. I loved this mentor text because it made connections with popular characters from fairy tales in a new way. I could picture and hear each character as I read their letters and as the plot developed. The letter genre presentation, exploration of mentor texts and the personal writing chapter in Tompkins (2012) helped me understand the genre and think about what I would do with my future students.
I currently work with special education students in a 6:1:1 setting. The digital letter generator resource is definitely something I plan to use in my own classroom. As the letter group highlighted, technology (specifically email) makes it seem that writing a traditional letter will become obsolete. This letter generator proves that technology can be used to help students to learn how to format and write a traditional letter. Students have to select what kind of letter they would like to generate (business or friendly) then the generator walks them through the steps of the letter writing process. Formatting letters is often the hardest thing for students to learn and even more difficult when it comes to word processing their work. Sometimes the formatting process can be a nightmare! Giving students a tool that helps them with formatting and forces them to include all the necessary parts of a letter is incredibly helpful for struggling learners!
I have used the letter genre in my teaching before many moons ago during my student teaching. I started my student teaching journey right here in Rochester at the Victor Primary School. My second placement was in Kumasi, Ghana. I wanted to create a connection between both of my experiences and both sets of students. I had my 3rd grade students write pen pal letters to the Ghanaian students I hadn't met yet. My 3rd graders introduced themselves, wrote about their lives and even included pictures of themselves doing the things they loved. I made dozens of copies of each letter before I left for Ghana just in case I had more than 20 Ghanaian kiddos in my class. I am so glad I did! I had a total of 240 second grade students when I taught at KNUST Basic School in Kumasi. My Ghanaian students each wrote a letter back to my students at Victor Primary. I brought back tons of letters back to Victor for my first kiddos to enjoy! Here's a photo of my kiddos in Ghana writing their responses to their pen pals right here at home!
If you could go back and teach letter writing again to your students in Ghana Ashley, are there any other mentor texts you would want to show them or any additional information that you would want them to develop understanding of (from Tompkins or the quotes of the other authors offered during the presentation?)
ReplyDeleteIf I were to teach this again, I would definitely use some of the mentor texts that this website provides: https://kidworldcitizen.org/books-about-pen-pals/ All of these books are about cross cultural pen pals which is exactly what I did with the students I had at Victor Primary and KNUST Basic School in Kumasi. The book Same, Same but Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw really caught my eye. It includes pictures and post cards from pen pals that live in the US and India. It highlights that their lives are very similar- they just have different details. Which is exactly what I was looking for students to do- find commonalities across culture! The example of Friendly Letter Form Tompkins includes in Figure 5-4 on page 118 would have been helpful to share with students as well. The Letter Genre expert group shared the quote from Tompkins Students “wrote longer and more complex letters once they started receiving responses to their letters” (p. 117). I wish I had the opportunity to keep the letters between the 2 classes going. I would have loved to see their letter responses grow in complexity!
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