LILY ASPER TRUST

OBJECTIVE: Students learn how to pull up an e-mail and respond. This lesson teaches students to use electronic mail to communicate in an appropriate manner in order to gather more information for their project.

TIME REQUIRED: One to two 60 minute class periods

BACKGROUND: Students should be familiar with the school computers and should be able to navigate to the Internet so that they can follow the exercise.

ADVANCED PREPARATION: Set up an e-mail account to help students learn to pull up an e-mail and respond. E-mail a fake letter so that you can demonstrate on the projector how to pull and e-mail up and respond to one. Prepare some directions on e-mailing so that students will also have a written explanation in front of them. Assign students to groups and give each group a role as orchid sales, orchid growing or orchid propagation.

ANTICIPATORY SET: Ask your students how many students use e-mail. Ask them to brainstorm on the advantages and disadvantages to using e-mail. Discuss their findings with the class and revisit Internet etiquette and appropriate responses.

ACTIVITY: Students go to www.excite.com. where they sign in and read an e-mail that tells them that they have just inherited an orchid nursery. The lily letter tells the class that they have been given a nursery to maintain. They must learn how to maintain her collection of plants and keep the business running. Students respond to the e-mail after reading the letter by accepting the responsibility as well as letting the lawyer know how they will collect information on their role of orchid sales, orchid growing and orchid propagation.

PROCEDURE:

  1. Class Discussion on Internet etiquette and appropriate responses.

  2. Teacher reviews how to type a letter so that students properly respond to the e-mail.

  3. Students go to www.excite.com. to sign in with the appropriate name and password provided by the teacher.

  4. Students read the e-mail letter.

  5. Students reply to the letter by accepting the offer to take care of the nursery.

CLOSURE: Students print out their e-mail reply and turn into the teacher using letter rubric. You can also create your own rubric on http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php. Separate students into their groups using the orchid roles sheet. Class discussion on the project and assignment for the project.

EXTENSION: Invite a "trust" lawyer to come to the classroom to talk to the students about trusts. Students create a list of questions for the lawyer about the orchid operation (five to ten) to e-mail at home. (Example: How big is the nursery? What species of orchids are in the nursery?)

HOMEWORK: Students e-mail their questions to the lawyer from home. If they don't have a computer at home, they can use the classroom computer during recess or after school.

SKILLS: RESPONSE TO WRITING, E-MAIL, ANALYZING, INFERRING, ORGANIZING, COMMUNICATING

ASSESSMENT: Using the letter rubric, teacher grades e-mail letter and monitors and guides students through e-mail operations.

EVALUATION: This lesson works best if you use more than one class period. You might have students print out the e-mail letter from Richard Smith to work on in class. Students will then have more time to work on their letter so that the next time that you go to the computer lab or use your classroom computers, they will be already to just type the e-mail on the computer. If you close down the e-mail, the next time that they go into the e-mail the letter will show as already read. Students then just click on it. and follow the same steps as the e-mail guidelines for replying to the e-mail.

MATERIALS AND RESEARCH

STUDENT WORK SAMPLE

VOCABULARY