Letters to Spencer

Ms. Leom is working on writing friendly letters with her students. The writing standard is that students write in a variety of styles.

Ms. Leom was able to organized fourth grade penpals for one class (she has been anxiously waiting for the first letters to arrive and will post when that happens), and she looked for another opportunity ...

It happened with a friend from high school shared her experience of sending her son, Spencer, off to basic training for the marines in San Diego, California. Ms. Leom contacted her friend and asked if Spencer might be interested in receiving letters from fourth graders. The mom was sounded thrilled! She contacted his drill instructor to make sure. There were some rules involved ... no pictures, stickers, fancy colors ... we could do that! The drill instructor also inquired if some of the letters could be shared ... some of the recruits in that platoon had no family who would be writing! This was even better!

Marine Recruit Spencer

We started on Wednesday with our rough drafts. We had to talk about the difference between writing to fourth grade penpals and the writing to recruits. We "know" Spencer, but when we are writing to members of his platoon, we need to think about being safe. This is a discussion we need to have when we talk about internet safety too, so it was a fantastic opportunity! We talked about how there are bullies in the world, people who like to be mean. One way we can protect ourselves, is to limit the information we share and include our parents when we have situations where we have the potential to meet new people. When we limit information, we don't tell specific details about ourselves, like all about our families and our likes and dislikes. We talk in more general terms. This is new to students, so we work on this together and have minimal independence for now. Safety is our priority.

For example, we started our letters:
     "Hello from 9 degrees farahenheit in Central Minnesota! It feels like minus 1 degrees, because of the wind chill. Some of my favorite things to do this time of year are ..." In the summer, we like to ..."

Ms. Leom collects all the letters to edit. Even the final drafts will be collected to insure students were careful in what they share.

This is a big learning opportunity for us. It includes several learning areas. We are working on our writing. We are writing to someone in San Diego, California. California is in the Western Region of the United States, so it has a Social Studies application. When we talk about Olweus and our School expectations, we talk about citizenship. Citizenship is the trait of helping others. Our school works on Dimes for December (collecting money for Christmas gifts for local children), Pennies for Patients (collecting loose change for leukemia research), and our Soup Drive (collecting soup and other foods for our local food pantry). This is something our students can share with their time.

Today, our students worked on our final drafts.

Lastly, we talked about how Spencer and his platoon are beginning their JOB training. They may not have the opportunity to write back to us. If Spencer does have time for a letter, we think he should write to his mom.

After further chatting with his mom, she said boot camp is tough, and these letters have the potential to make a big difference in this training phrase without access to phones, tv, newspapers, or any other media, letters are welcome!

The benefit of having one class write friendly letters to fourth grade penpals and one class write friendly letters to Marine recruits, both classes can benefit from the purpose of letter writing. Students can learn about the process as we share our discussions and talk about the differences. What an exciting time to learn!!