Friendly Letter Writing Lesson

In Summer School this week we are learning how to write a friendly letter.  These kids have just finished first grade and will be in second next year.  I wanted to find a fun way to teach all of the parts of a friendly letter, which can be difficult for struggling students and ELLs.  I found this super cute resource, and decided to run with it.

First I drew a little lady, and labeled the five parts.  Together we created definitions for each part of the letter (for example, a greeting means hello, and usually we write Dear).  We also used our bodies to demonstrate the parts of a letter (the "body" portion is much longer than any of the other parts).

Then, we analyzed a letter that I had written.  We marked up the text using our new vocabulary to find the five parts of my letter.  Next time I teach this lesson, I will have the students write the letter together on chart paper.  This way the children can refer to it (I used the white board... whoops!).

Lastly, each child wrote his or her own letter to the firefighters who were kind enough to drive to our school on the HOTTEST day of the year (It was over 100!).  They let the kids climb all through their fire engine, try on their helmets and they even tried on all of their gear for the kids to see.  Wow!

Demonstrating why they keep their pants over their boots...

 And making sure the kids know why they wear a mask (and reminding them not to be scared if they ever see a firefighter in a mask)

Sorry for the terrible picture quality... A. They were taken on my phone and B. They were the only ones with no children's faces in them.