Email Learning

This week, in Social Studies, Ms. Leom organized students into partners for a one time event. She made one partner the "reader" role and one partner the "writer" role. She emailed the readers their directions and five texts. She emailed the writers their directions. Together, students had to read one article on longitude and latitude. Then they could choose the other two articles they were reading. It was an opportunity to read our vocabulary terms in context, to extend our learning, and to give real-world application to what we are learning about. Fourth graders get excited about receiving emails, so it was fun to make use of emails to share information. Our high school helper was able to sit with groups as they worked, and Ms. Leom worked to get to each pair. With some students absent, we had to organize some groups of three between the two classes.

I'm not sure it is a strategy we would use often, but it was fun for students to have specific roles, to utilize email as a learning tool, and to extend their learning.