Dearborn Public Schools
10 Tips for Incoming Freshman in High School
Everyone entering high school could use some helpful hints for their first few weeks. A list of ten tips guide new freshmen through social interactions, classroom dynamics, and extracurricular activities.
Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary
Science Pen Pals
Students explore the scientific career of Benjamin Franklin. For this science lesson, students discuss Franklin's correspondence with other scientists and write letters describing Benjamin Franklin's experiments.
Curated OER
Postcards from Somewhere
Students correspond with e-pals about their community. In this cross curriculum geography, technology, and literacy lesson, students complete a postcard webquest about their home location including local photographs. Students e-mail...
Curated OER
E-Pal Adventure
Eighth graders develop online writing relationships with students from another area in their state. They write weekly regarding assigned topics, including researching information about the area in which they live.
Curated OER
Key Pals
Second graders analyze the proper form of friendly letters and write emails to a key pal. In this friendly letters and email lesson, 2nd graders discuss sending friendly letters and view examples of the letter format. Students then...
Curated OER
In My Other Life
Students explore various cultural identities. They conduct Internet research, develop a questionnaire that profiles information from their selected culture, and write a letter to a pen pal in the U.S. explaining what life in their...
Curated OER
E-Mail Mentor Project
Students use e-mail to introduce themselves, ask for and receive advice and information on certain school concerns, and share information on activities they enjoy with other students from other schools.
Curated OER
Internet Pen Pals
Students write letters to e-mail pals and respond to letters received. Students describe the geography of their community to their pals.
Curated OER
Letter Writing -Traditional and Modern
Third graders study the parts of a friendly letter and how to address an envelope. They write pen pal letters using traditional and modern mailing practices.
Curated OER
The Ancient Maya
Students explore the culture of the Mayans through a variety of activities. In this instructional activity about Maya, students analyze pictures in books and on websites, produce scale models of Maya architecture, and create Maya...
Curated OER
Spanish Sentence Construction
After reviewing Spanish articles, nouns, noun gender, subject pronouns, and the verb ser, give your emerging Spanish speakers this practice packet. Several activities are included: an unscrambling exercise, translation practice, an...
Curated OER
Pen Pals
Young scholars discuss the sounds that different animals make. Then they play a listening game, using the animal sounds they've discussed.
Curated OER
Travel Buddies
A travel buddy is some sort of animal or stuffed character that is transported from one school to another and another. A journal accompanies the buddies and the students make journal entries as if they were written by the buddy at each...
Curated OER
Pen pals
Students explore the idea that where you live affects the way you view the world. They get to know people as individuals breaks down stereotypes.
Curated OER
Paragraph Writing
Third graders write paragraphs. In this paragraph lesson, 3rd graders discover the parts of a paragraph as they are compared to the pieces of a sandwich. They write their own paragraph to a foreign pen-pal describing our country.
Curated OER
Faster, Faster!
Young scholars practice reading faster, smoother and more expressively by exercising the strategy of reading and rereading text to become more familiar with word recognition. They participate in reading a page or two of "Pen Pals" to...
Curated OER
Parts of a Friendly Letter
The art of writing a letter has not been lost to email and texting! Teach kids how to format a friendly letter with a presentation about the parts of a letter, as well as prompting them to write a letter about their favorite holiday.
Curated OER
All About Me
Students create a collage from magazines, and the internet that is reflective of themselves and write a friendly letter via email to a pen pal. They take their letters through the writing process and write their final draft on Microsoft...
Curated OER
Postcard Template
Practice writing short letters with postcards. The resource includes two pages to make four postcards. The first page has space for drawing, and the second includes a place to write, address lines, and stamp spaces.
Apple State University
Friendly Letter Mini-Lesson
This mini-lesson plan about informal letter writing is packed with a lot of information about writing a friendly letter. Class members begin by working in pairs to answer questions after reviewing letter models. Then, take part in a...
Curated OER
Children's Literature Across the Curriculum Ideas-The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
Students read The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojacieckowski. They complete a variety of cross-curricular activities surrounding the Christmas holiday. Included are reading, art, math, science, writing, social studies,...
Curated OER
Keypals
Students discover how to write and send e-mail messages/letters. They correspond with other students of same age level in another geographic area on a social level.
Curated OER
How Different Are We from Other Students?
Fifth graders make bar graphs from data that they have collected. They have been writing to pen pals in Spain for a couple of months and received a survey back from them. They put all the data together that they collected.