Phase 1: Intensive Email Activity

 

Deep Connections:

 

I know the audience of the email I write, and how I should respond.

 

I know how and when to email.

 

Student Inquiries:

 

How is reading online different than reading online?

 

How well do I know how to email?

 

Learning Outcomes:

 

Students will

 

* Learn to use the “reply” and “reply to all” functions to reply to an

e-mail message, and learn when each type of reply might be appropriate.

* Learn the common format for replying above the original

message, and compose and send their own replies in this format.

* By working together to analyze messages and replies, explore how

using the original message as the context for a reply, with the

original message embedded below the reply, helps to make a reply more comprehensible and is essential in some cases.

* By working together to analyze messages and replies, explore how

the subject of a reply can help make it more comprehensible, and learn how to give a message a subject and check that their replies have an appropriate subject.

 

Online Reading Comprehension Outcome:

 

Students will know how to compose and send an email.

 

Students will know how to appropriately read and respond to an email.

 

Materials:

 

Projector

 

Access to computer lab

Drafts of the two emails are included below

 

 

Process:

 

Quick review as to the basics on logging onto macbook, and more importantly, get to Epals site and log on.

 

Once all students are there, explain that Hollis Woods has emailed is moving to town, and has emailed them all a message about her life.

 

Instruct them to all open email and then freeze machines.  Show them the layout of the email.  Read the email to the students.

 

Discuss with students the intent of the message and what they have to do with the email.  Is a response necessary?  How do we know?

 

Unlock the computers and allow the students to respond if they chose.  Send the second email to all students.

 

Follow the same procedure as above to break down the email.  When you unlock the machines, have the students open Microsoft Word to write the response.  Finally have them save the response and copy and paste back to Epals. 

 

Students should send response.

 

Model:  

 

 

Guided Inquiry:

 

 

IRT Inquiry Challenge:

 

    * No challenge.  Just have them get the assignment done, and use the rubric to help while crafting their response.

 

 

 

Assessment

 

•    The email response will be used as the assessment for this lesson.  Was the student able to locate and read the two emails sent to them?  Was the student able to respond and send their response to Hollis Woods?  Did they respond to all of the questions that Hollis presented to them?

 

 

Resources

 

Below are the two emails sent out to the students…

 

 

Hello new friend.

 

My name is Hollis Woods.  I’m twelve and I’m a mountain of trouble.  My name is a real place, a place they found me when I was a baby.  An hour old, no blanket, with a scrap of paper that said, “Call her Hollis Woods” I’ve been in foster care all my life.  Being moved from one family to the next.  I run away sometimes.  I don’t go to school.  Kids don’t want to play with me.  Don’t feel sorry for me because I am tough!

 

I’m also an artist.  I’ve been happy with the families I’ve been placed with twice.  In my story, "Pictures of Hollis Woods" I tell all about the time I lived with the Regans and with Josie Cahill.

 

The Regans, Izzy, her husband, Old Man, and their son, Steven, wanted to adopt me, make me part of the family, the daughter Izzy never had.  I ran away after Steven was critically injured in an automobile wreck that was my fault.  Josie, the retired art teacher, nurtured my love of art but was very forgetful. She was in the beginning stages of dementia and I soon became the caregiver for her.

 

I think you read all about my life in my book, "The Pictures of Hollis Woods".  I should be moving to your school soon and I wanted to introduce myself before I got there.

 

Have a nice day,

Hollis Woods

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, I think I will be moving to East Hartford next week.  I won’t be starting school until after the holiday break.

 

Since I’m new in town, and don’t know my way around, I was wondering if you could tell me a little about East Hartford.  I want to know three good places to go eat.  I really like to eat everything, so I really don’t have a preference.

 

I also wanted to know if you could tell me about your school.  Tell me two things I really need to know to be a success at East Hartford Middle School.  I want to make sure that I do things right when I get a new start there.

 

And finally, tell me one really fun place to go, or fun thing to do in East Hartford.  I won’t have a lot of free time because of homework, but when I do, I want to have fun.  So what is one thing I should do for fun while in East Hartford.

 

Thanks again,

Hollis Woods

 

 

 

 

 

 

This lesson has been heavily borrowed from one found on the NCTE Read, Write, Think website. http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=300

 

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