You've Got Mail: Letter Writing Lessons and More
Learning about mail and letter writing can lead students on an educational journey that can be rewarding.
By Jacqueline Dwyer
Introducing students to the concept of communication through mail is a wonderful, multidisciplinary topic for students, and can be tailored to suit all ages and abilities. I would like to share some of the ways I've taught this subject to my own students.
Mail Delivery: Getting From A to B
We began our unit by reading Gail Gibbon’s "The Post Office Book: Mail and How It Moves." This simple book is a great introduction to mail delivery. It outlines what happens to a letter from the time it’s mailed until it reaches its destination. After you read the book together, test for understanding by asking younger children to put pictures of the steps in order, which hones their sequencing skills. You might also ask older children to design a flowchart showing the same information.
Animal and Vehicle Transportation of Mail
By looking at mail delivery from a historical and geographical perspective, you can cover social studies topics as well. First, ask your students to research the different modes of transportation involved in mail delivery around the world, from stagecoaches to mail trucks, airplanes, and big rigs. Nowadays, many mail delivery companies provide online package tracking. Have fun going online with students to track the progress of a package across the country, as it moves from state to state. You can also look at the many animals whose job it was, and still is, to transport mail from one place to another. This is a great opportunity for your students to learn about distances, terrain, and weather conditions on different continents. My children learned about the use of camels in Australia, dogs in Alaska, and horses and homing pigeons all over the world. They then used their knowledge to create a board game, whereby an animal has to get from point A to point B in a specified period of time. This is a wonderful opportunity for them to showcase their creativity and what they’ve learned.
The Beauty of Letter Writing
Some people might say that letter writing is a lost art, but it need not be. The key is finding what works best for your students. A good jumping off point is to look at the differences in style between friendly and business letters, then practice writing one of each. Once your students are comfortable with the letter format, give them options for what kind of letter they’d like to write. My teenage son decided to write a ghost letter. A ghost letter is a letter written under the guise of a historical or fictional character. My son chose to be George Washington, writing home to his wife, Martha. This style of letter worked well for him, as it let him be ‘in character’, but allowed him emotional distance. My daughter, on the other hand, sent a very personal letter to herself about what she thought her life would be like in five years. She included her dreams, aspirations, hopes, likes, and dislikes. Choose age and interest-appropriate writing activities. For example, my six-year-old wrote simple postcards to family members, and asked them to write back. Once he received their postcards, an older child helped him construct a simple graph to show the towns, states and countries that the postcards came from.
Mail-Based Art Activities
A fun activity that encompasses mail-based art and social studies is to design your own stamp. Ask your children to give examples of things that have had a positive impact on American life, history or culture. One child of mine chose Mount Rushmore. He designed a set of four stamps to commemorate the four presidents featured there. Another child chose well-known American bridges, including an early covered bridge and the Golden Gate, and featured each on a separate stamp. Don’t forget that mailboxes themselves provide a wonderful opportunity for some really creative artwork. All you need is a white metal mailbox and some locally-sourced materials. For example, after my son read "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Back, he painted seagulls and waves onto a white mailbox, then glued on a variety of seashells he’d collected. The finished product made a colorful, tactile piece of 3-D art that doubles as a unique storage box. What follows are more lesson plans related to mail and letter writing.
Mail and Letter Writing Lesson Plans:
Design Packing to Safely Mail Raw Spaghetti
A fantastic, interactive lesson in which children design packaging to ensure raw spaghetti will reach its destination without being damaged.
Young students look at mail carriers as community helpers. They also write letters, address envelopes, then mail the letters to their parents.
Students in the younger grades learn how to recycle junk mail by making it into necklaces and bracelets.