Text types: Texts for fun & leisure
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Letters | |
What are letters?: Teaching suggestions
When preparing students to write personal letters you should plan a number of activities to familiarise them with the basic format and typical conventions such as the position of address, date, salutation (greeting), main body, closing, writer's name. The best way to start is with good model texts which you take into the classroom and analyse together with the students, ideally on an OHP so that you can use different coloured pens. Discuss the reasons for the layout and examine the function of each different stage within the model. A useful follow-up activity is to take a model letter and cut it up so that each section is on one piece of paper. Students have to reassemble the different pieces of the 'jigsaw'.
When students have a good understanding of the various features of the model letter, it is a good idea to do a joint construction with them before asking them to begin writing on their own. You will need to establish a context (who you are, who you are writing to, why you are writing and what you are going to write about). Here are some ideas for things to write about:
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special events such as birthdays, new babies; also disasters such as illness, accidents, typhoons, fires, etc. |
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festivals and holidays such as Christmas, Chinese New Year, Easter, Halloween, etc. |
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entertainment and leisure eg films, games, TV programmes, concerts, plays, hobbies, sports, etc. |
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the world around us, eg weather, country parks, local markets, other schools, other countries, etc. |
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our school, eg teachers, subjects, classroom, playground, classmates, friends, bullies, etc. |
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home and family life, eg our parents, our brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. |
Again, you can use an OHP to demonstrate the brainstorming, drafting and revision process. The final stage is to set a writing task which involves the students in writing their own personal letter. You can easily vary the task to include writing a postcard or party invitation.
For PrimeTeach teaching activities which provide KS2 students with practice in writing personal letters (including postcards and party invitations), see:
New Year's food
A spooky party
Witches and vampires
My penfriend
Write to
me!
Sending animal postcards
Save the trees
If it's
sunny ...
Postcards 1
Postcards 2
Postcards 3
Visiting Hong Kong
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