Student-to-student letters: Organize pen pals or small letter-writing groups. Divide your class into small groups and give a bag to each group. Once again, we are holding a letter-writing competition for high school students. There is an art to writing a good greeting card and an art to making it pleasing to the eye and unusual. It is quite a common activity for students to write something intended for publication. Related. Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to: 1. identify the elements of a letter 2. apply the elements to compose a personal letter In order to get students thinking about business letters, ask how many reasons they can think of for writing this type of letter. This article contains activities to help children ages 5–9 put pen to paper and make someone's day with a handwritten letter. Email: letters@nytimes.com. For examples of what we’re looking for, look at the letters published here. Once again, we are holding a letter-writing competition for high school students. It may also be worth highlighting the punctuation used here, i.e. Other issues which are problematic for your learners, such as paragraphing, over-long sentences etc., can also be dealt with here. Many activities are available for beginning students, but it can be harder to come up with activities for advanced ESL students that are appropriate to their ages and language levels. Please put “Student Competition” in the subject line. Give students the model letter (Worksheet 2) and ask them to compare it with their letter. This is a collaborative project for higher-level ESL students. (Too informal, doesn't follow letter-writing conventions). Divide the class into two teams. You need a list of words, a chair or desk, a blackboard or whiteboard and something to write with. This site lists over 30 writing activities to promote self-reflection for students of all levels. Letter writing is an essential skill. That task can mean writing an article, an entry for a competition, and a review, and all possible write-ups that can be published in an English magazine. Worksheet 1 48k; Worksheet 2 46k; Worksheet 3 44k; Peer evaluation 44k; Procedure. Quarterback, Joe Baker completed 18 out of 24 passes to cement the win. Write a word or phrase on the board. Include your name, age, high school and grade, and city or town and state (for publication) and telephone number (not for publication). If you’re looking for some unusual, short and sweet writing options, check out John Spencer’s Creative Writing Prompts for Students playlist. Develop students' composition skills and celebrate Letter Writing Week with these printables and activities. In pairs, students re-write the letter to make it more appropriate as a formal letter. The Hot Seat. The deadline is April 8. The Process: Acrostics are simple poems whereby each letter of a word or phrase begins a new line in the poem. Many ESL activities for high school students can be used to teach and reinforce integrated and higher English skills. Many ESL activities for high school students can be used to teach and reinforce integrated and higher English skills. They then compare their version with a model text, helping them to notice the conventional formulae used in this type of letter, and incorporate some of this new language into another similar letter. You'll find formatting tips and strategies for teaching your students the basics of different types of letter-writing (like persuasive, business, and friendly), and also plenty of lesson plans to put their newfound knowledge into practice. In this activity, learners attempt to re-write an inappropriately informal business letter in a more appropriate, formal style. You can make this timed or not timed, depending on your students and their language levels. After this time is up, everyone rotates stories, and picks up a new story where the first writer left off. Divide your class into small groups. Don't help them too much at this stage - the idea is that students write the best letter they are capable of using their existing language resources. Each student will then write a letter to the editor in which they address some of the things brainstormed in the group. © British Council, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN, UK The titles alone (e.g.,"If I Had the Power," "I Am What I Think I Am!") Amber D. Walker has been writing professionally since 1989. Letter Writing Week is celebrated in January. Those teachers also impact learners because of the great creative writing activities they use to get the students' imaginations to run free. We invite you to submit a letter to the editor in response to a Times news article, editorial, column or Op-Ed in the last few days. Preparation If you don't know the name of the person you are writing to, then the letter begins Dear Sir / Madam, and ends Yours faithfully.) This creates a need for the conventional letter-writing language which may be 'missing' from their current knowledge. Essay writing is a major part of high school so it’s important to find different ways of engaging students to reinforce their learning of this type of text. Teach students to consider their audience and to keep a written dialogue going over several letters as they write to different peers. The Purpose: This is another great way to get students to try their hand at writing poetry - a genre that many students find the most daunting of all. For higher-level practice, make a rule that all discussion and preparation has to be done in English. Break up the class into small groups and give each group an article from a recent edition of the local newspaper. Elicit some of the kinds of things they will need to change to make it more formal (vocabulary, sentence structure, layout, paragraphing, greeting and close). Ask students to write back and forth to one or more peers using provided prompts and sample questions. Explain to them that they are all managers of a beautiful beachfront hotel that has many problems that they need to solve. Children, start your letter writing. Despite the prevalence of emails and text messages, everyone has to write letters at some point. Pop-up cards are definitely unique! Sample activities include two types of stationery for student letters and a handout that encourages students to contemplate and write about their plans for the future. Pen pals, old school style. They then write the letter, working collaboratively. This activity is particularly suitable for higher level Business English students, or adult learners who need to write formal letters in English in real life. Walker holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Texas and worked as an English teacher abroad for six years. (See the Peer evaluation form for an example of how this can be done). Make enough copies of these worksheets so that each student can have one. After reading the article, have students discuss questions or opinions they have on the article. Then ask what's wrong with the text. Check out our Letter-Writing Lessons & Tips to discover even more great resources. Teaching English as a second language (ESL) to high school students can be challenging. Students choose a situation from Worksheet 3, brainstorm in pairs, and select appropriate language from their own letter and Worksheet 2. The Hot Seat is a no-preparation game that you can adapt to teach vocabulary, verb tenses, phrases or other grammar principles. Introduction. The letters can be collected in by the teacher for assessment / correction purposes, or used for a peer-evaluation activity. Students will have a certain amount of time to come up with a skit that uses all the words in the bag and includes each member of the group. Copyright 2020 Leaf Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Education, Explore state by state cost analysis of US colleges in an interactive article, Ronald V. White: Activating Advanced ESL Students-A Problem and a Solution. Give your students a certain amount of time to prepare their solutions, then ask them to make presentations concerning the problem and how they would solve it. Hand each group a problem, such as "No one knows about the hotel, so there are few guests" or "There are no activities for children." a comma after the greeting, as this can vary between languages. We invite students to submit a letter in response to a recent article, and we’ll publish some of our favorites. This activity is particularly suitable for higher level Business English students, or adult learners who need to write formal letters in English in real life. Our first home win this season at our very own Jane Doe Field was a morale booster to the entire student body. At this stage you might also wish to draw attention to the conventional greetings and endings for formal letters. Again, because this is a lesson plan for primary school students, it should be adapted to suit the grade of high school you’re … (In British English, if the name of the person is used, e.g. Do this several times, until everyone in the group has had a chance to contribute to every story. Letters should be about 150 to 200 words and include the headline and a link to the article. For Skit in a Bag, you will need slips of paper and plastic or paper bags. We will publish a selection of our favorites. Divide the class into two teams. The team going first (or you) will choose a member to sit in the hot seat at the front of the class, facing away from the board. In this way, some of the conventional sentence frames which are so common in business letters are 'fed in'. If you want to make it more complicated, you can ask them to include visual aids, use PowerPoint presentations or include a cost analysis. Give learners the inappropriately informal letter (Worksheet 1). This stage could also be done individually for homework if time is short. The student's team must try to get him to guess the word or phrase by giving non-verbal clues. Great creative writing teachers are very passionate about literature, and because of them many of their students will continue to pursue creative writing outside of school. This activity has students deconstruct other essays to learn about essay structure, which will help them when they go to write their own essays. 23. How to Write to an Author . Pop-Up Cards. High school students don't want to be treated like children but still want activities that are fun and entertaining. Allow the group to choose the best letter and send it off. Video Writing Prompts. For more opportunities to publish student work, visit The New York Times Learning Network Contest Calendar. No more than five people should be in each group. Prepare a list of nouns, adverbs and adjectives, including location names. 2. McKamey’s approach to writing instruction was shaped in part by her own experiences as a high-school student. The Hot Seat is a no-preparation game that you can adapt to teach vocabulary, verb tenses, phrases or other grammar principles. Ask the students to identify language from the model which they could use to improve their letter. In addition, some students are not familiar with the form of address Ms, which refers to a woman without specifying her marital status. You need a list of words, a chair or desk, a blackboard or whiteboard and something to write with. She has had essays published in "Fort Worth Weekly," "Starsong," "Paper Bag," "Living Buddhism" and more. The Varsity football team beat Smith High School last Saturday, 21 to 7, in a rematch that vindicated Coach John’s prediction of a win during Friday’s pep-rally. Share the final products with the group. In small groups of 3 or 4, each person starts a story and gets 3-5 minutes to write. © BBC World Service, Bush House, Strand, London WC2B 4PH, UK, Catherine Morley, Teacher, Trainer, Writer, Fun discussion of controversial topics - the 'Tap-In Debate', Gerunds and infinitives: Farmer Jones and his wife, Education exchange: Schools reopening - pupil well-being, Take a survey on teaching speaking in online environments. Dear Mr. Jones, then the ending is Yours sincerely. Ask a few simple comprehension questions. Students will learn about basic letter formats and practice writing formal, persuasive, and friendly letters. Give a couple of examples, then get students to brainstorm in pairs, before feeding back to the class. 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