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Instructional Objectives: Students will communicate via email with another fifth grade class. They will generate interview questions with an emphasis on dreams for the future, interview their pals, and create a brief biography of their epal.
Writing
California Standard Research and Technology
1.4 Create simple documents by using electronic media and employing
organizational features (e.g., passwords, entry and pull-down
menus, word searches, the thesaurus, spell checks).
Organization and Focus
1.2 Create multiple-paragraph expository compositions:
a. Establish a topic, important ideas, or events in sequence or
chronological order.
b. Provide details and transitional expressions that link one
paragraph to another in a clear line of thought.
c. Offer a concluding paragraph that summarizes important ideas
and details.
Time Required: Four, forty-five minute periods
Advance preparation and prerequisite knowledge and skills: The instructor will need to set up student email accounts and monitor email correspondence. Two excellent sites are Epals or Gaggle.Net. The teacher will need to find a fifth grade classroom to correspond with. Epals is able to facilitate this process. The students will need to be instructed on how to use their email accounts, and appropriate use of email.
Materials and resources required: Computers with Internet access and email accounts for every student.
email: short for "electronic mail" and refers to composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.
login name: is the account name used to access a computer system. Also called user ID or user name, it is a way people identify themselves to their online service or Internet access provider.
user name: also called user ID or account name, is the same as your login name. This is the name by which you and your electronic mailbox are identified online.
password: a code or word used to gain access to restricted data on a computer network
email address: refers to a computer mailing address to which email may be sent
Procedures: The teacher introduces the concept of email and discusses uses, netiquette and safety issues, and the differences between email addresses, user names and passwords. Demonstrate how to log on and off, how to access email, and how to compose email and send, and how to add friends to address book. The instructor can send each student a greeting and ask for a response. Students practice with supervision, reply to their teacher's message and send messages to each other. During the second session the students send a message to their epals introducing themselves. Next, the class generates some questions they can pose to their pals including questions about what dreams they have for the future and how they will accomplish these goals. During the third session, the students send email messages containing the questions and over the next week periodically check for responses. The last activity is to write a short biography of their pal.
Evaluation: Was the student able to correspond using email? Use the rubric designed for the evaluation of the biography portion of this activity and designed at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/One method of grading the project using the rubric might be to assign 4 points for items in the excellent column, 3 for items in the good column, 2 points in the satisfactory column and 1 point for the needs improvement column. A student who earns 15 or more points would be considered to have scored above average, 10-14 would be average, and a score between five and nine would be below average and the student did not meet the objectives.
Homework: Students will write the short biography of their epal at home.
Extension: Students can send the biography to their epal via email as an attachment.
Student Work Samples: Click here for student paragraphs