One of the most successful strategies I have used in teaching my second graders how to write a friendly letter is having a penpal class in another school. My students write to other second graders all year - not in our school but another district school - and they LOVE it! The children really get into this - and it gives them a real-life purpose for writing. What I love is when they find the mistakes - although they never seem to find the mistakes in their own writing…
I would recommend your child writing to a friend in another state, a cousin, or any family member they don’t see often. If you don’t have anyone in mind, you could google children’s penpals - you could find a penpal in the U.S. or overseas. I hesitate to recommend a website because I haven’t used one, but I know there are plenty of these sites out there in cyberspace. Maybe your child could write to a missionary’s child in another country. You could get some ideas at your church or another local church that supports missionaries.
When our daughter was in high school, she had many penpals from all over the world. I know you can also find penpals for younger children online. This is an awesome and fun way to encourage writing! Make sure they know and use the five parts of a letter: heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature.
Happy writing!!
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May 21st, 2008 at 9:47 pm
My second grade teacher set us up with penpals by entering our info into some system where kids in Australia got our names from a World’s Fair booth. I ended up with postcards from 5 girls. 3 of them I kept in contact with through high school and one of them I still keep in contact with although we rarely right real letters anymore, just emails and chatting! But she came to visit me 2 summers ago and I hope to go visit her sometime. It was fun to tell people we’d been penpals for 19 years (21 now!) and had never met until then!
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
In elementary school I remember having penpals, and it was a lot of fun… I wish we had continued the tradition in high school! I’ve also just added you to my LibraryThing Bloggers page, so drop by to make sure your name and link are correct