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Three to six 50-minute sessions
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| Overview |
 In this lesson, students will discuss literature through a series
of letter exchanges. Exchanged letters can take the form of handwritten letters,
typed letters, electronic documents, e-mail, online discussion posts, and even
Weblog posts. Letter series can be used in conjunction with any work of literature
and any other assignment. Students can even be asked to carry on a year-long
discussion in which they make connections among a number of literary works.
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| From Theory to Practice |
Art Young argues that having students write letters to each
other in order to explore literature is a collaborative learning activity that
asks them to engage in higher-order critical thinking skills by generating the
issues they will discuss and by responding to each other’s ideas and questions.
Further
Reading
Young, Art. 1997. “Mentoring, Modeling, Monitoring, Motivating: Response to Student’s
Writing as Academic Conversation.” Writing to Learn: Strategies for Assigning
and Responding to Writing Across the Disciplines. Ed. Mary Dean Sorcinelli
and Peter Elbow. Jossey-Bass Publishers. 27-39.
Fredericksen, Elaine. “Letter
Writing in the College Classroom.” Teaching English in the Two-Year
College 27.3 (March 2000): 278-284.
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| Student Objectives |
Students will
- read and analyze literature, both individually and in groups
- explore and discuss
literature through writing
- develop arguments and support ideas with evidence
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| Instructional Plan |
Resources
Preparation
- Choose a text and, if you want, an activity to base the
letters on. See the Letter Exchange Example for suggestions.
- Decide upon a timeframe and context for the use of letter
writing groups, taking into consideration the following questions:
- Will the groups exchange letters in conjunction with one literary work
or assignment, during one unit of the course, or throughout the year?
- How
many letters exchanges will constitute a series? The number of letter exchanges
will depend upon your specific context, but should have at least three exchanges.
- When will the letter exchanges begin? After the literary work has been
read? After a specific assignment is completed? As the students are reading
the work? While letter series that begins after the students have finished
the text or a specific assignment will likely focus on an analysis of the
literary work, a letter series that begins while the students are still reading
the work will likely focus on their impressions or reactions to the work.
- What
is the purpose of the letter exchange? Are they meant to be a low stakes
writing to learn assignment? Will you incorporate ideas raised in the letters
into quizzes or exams? Will they serve as a starting point for papers or
group reports?
- Decide upon the medium of exchange. Do you want the letters to be
- Exchanged as paper documents?
- Exchanged as electronic documents (i.e. word processing files)?
- Exchanged
as e-mail?
- Exchanged through an online discussion forum?
- Exchanged as a Weblog?
Choose a medium of exchange based upon your familiarity and your students’
level of access. See the Letter Exchange Medium Options handout
for additional information.
- Decide upon the method of evaluation. Do you want to evaluate the letters based on:
- Completion?
- Content evaluated by you?
- Content self-evaluated via a rubric?
- Decide how you will establish groups. If the decision is up to
you, assign students into groups of four to six.
Review the Letter Exchange Chart Example and decide how you will set up
students’s exchanges.
- If needed, establish a class site, online discussion forum, or weblog.
- Customize and print out any handouts to be used, including the chart, guidelines,
and rubric.
- Test the Letter Generator
Student Interactive on
your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have
the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in
from the technical support page.
Instruction and Activities
Stage One
- Preview the assignment. Working in groups, students
will explore a work of literature by exchanging a series of letters. They
will write an opening letter, give that letter to two classmates, read and
respond to the two letters they are given, etc. Discuss time frame, medium
of exchange, and method of evaluation.
- Discuss the
difference between exploring an issue and providing a final, definitive answer
to a subject. While the former is open-ended and geared towards fostering dialogue,
the latter seeks to create a closed interpretation and end discussion. Therefore,
letters for this project should meet the following characteristics:
- Good letters explore an issue, idea, impression, or interpretation.
They have a focused point.
- Good letters support their point by making direct references to the text.
- Good letters are written to explore an issue and leave room for response.
The purpose is not to prove a point about the literary work but to question
and think about it.
- As a class, brainstorm a potential opening letter for literary
work you have recently read. Focus on exploring an issue from that work in
a way that both uses specific examples and leaves room for discussion.
- Introduce
the literary work you will use and any other activities you may use in
conjunction with the letter writing series, such as brainstorming activities,
assignments designed to explore the text, etc.
- If you are using an online
discussion forum or Weblog, introduce your students to the environment, establish
their accounts, and teach them how to use the software. Because of the ways
these systems work, you may find it easier
to establish groups before you introduce students to the environment.
- As the class practices using the
software, keep an eye out for students who know or learn the system quickly
and ask them to help other students. Introduce students to the help system,
and show them how to use it to find answers. If you decide to use e-mail,
make sure all your students have access to an e-mail account. If you choose
to exchange files as electronic documents, establish a plan to overcome compatibility
issues, such as saving documents as Rich Text Format files (.rtf).
Stage Two
- If you have not done so already, establish groups and
fill out the Letter
Exchange Charts with students. You can share the Letter
Exchange Chart Example with students to demonstrate how the chart is
completed. Alternately, you can complete the chart for students prior to
class.
- Hand out and review the letter exchange guidelines, explain
the number of letters involved in the series, and introduce the prompt for
the first exchange. Good prompts generally ask students to explore issues
that have no definitive answer, and they ask students to support their responses
with direct reference to the text. If desired, juxtapose two or more passages
that seem to contradict each other or create some kind of tension with the
text or use a prompt that will help you evaluate student reaction or
understanding of a text. With difficult texts, ask students
to identify a problem they are having with the text, something they don’t
understand, and to write a initial letter that explains the problem and then
attempt to address that problem.
- Have students engage in prewriting or other
activities if you wish to use them, and have the students begin drafting
their initial letters if you want to provide class time to do so.
- If desired, students can use the Letter
Generator Student Interactive to write and print their
letters.
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Have students
exchange letters, either during class time or as homework depending upon
your particular context and the technology you’ve chosen. If you are collecting
letters at this time, make sure you get your copy, or if they are being exchanged
electronically, check to see if they have been e-mailed or posted.
- Evaluation of the first
letters, if it is being used, should occur after this session. Even if
you are not formally evaluating the letters, it is a good idea to look over
the first exchange to identify and address any problems, misunderstandings,
or glitches early on. Particularly look to see if each letter has a point,
uses textual support, and, most importantly, leaves room for response (the
letter exchange rubric can be of use here).
- Do keep in mind that exactly what constitutes a good
point/purpose of a letter will be largely determined by the prompt, the
letters, especially initial letters, are not essays. While “I don’t
know why Huck is such a jerk to Jim” isn’t
a good thesis for an essay, it can be the focal point of a good letter.
Stage Three
- As the letter exchanges progress, try to skim them and try
to incorporate ideas and issues they raise in class and encourage the students
to do the same.
- Spend some time discussing the actual process of writing
the letters as well as their content.
Stage Four
- Once the letter series is over, wrap up the activity.
- If
your goal was to use the letters as a low-stakes writing activity, then
have a culminating discussion that focuses on the letters and how their role
in exploring the text.
Extensions
- A letter exchange series can be used to extend any existing
assignment and works especially well to share ideas developed in group work.
Just form new groups and have the first prompt ask students to report on
what their initial group found.
- A letter exchange series can be used in
any writing to learn context. See Elaine Fredericksen’s “Letter
Writing in the College Classroom” for additional ideas.
Web Resources
- iLabs
http://www.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilabs/
- Designed for classes and groups that need to work together, iLabs is a free
collaboration site that provides such a number of useful tools.
- Tapped In
http://ti2.sri.com/tappedin/
- Tapped In is an online educational site that provides a number of useful
tools including threaded discussion forums.
- Blogger
http://www.blogger.com/
- Weblog software that also provides free hosting. Both individual and group
weblogs are possible.
- Conversant
http://www.free-conversant.com/
- Collaboration software that provides a number of tools and offers free hosting.
- ProBoards
http://www.proboards.com/index.html
- A free online discussion forum that allows users to create their own forums
and groups.
- LiveJournal
http://www.livejournal.com/
- Free Weblog site that allows users to create groups (called communities),
restrict who can read posts, and easily read
- Blogs in Education
http://awd.cl.uh.edu/blog/
- This site provides additional resources on blogging that teachers can use to learn more background information, find additional supporting sites for the classroom, and locate more blog hosting sites.
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| Student Assessment/Reflections |
| Assessment and reflection will depend upon context. Informal
assessment and reflection can include checking for completion and having students
use the Letter Exchange Rubric for self-evaluation. If you chose to evaluate
the letters for content, keep in mind this caution from Art Young: “The
primary value of the assignment is to the writer and not the readers; it is an
opportunity for active learning and problem solving. Thus, in responding, we
do not primarily judge the writing on how well it communicates to readers (or
how well it conforms to the form of the personal letter), but rather we value
and affirm the writing and learning revealed in the students’ writing and encourage
further inquiry” (36). |
2 - Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3 - Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
5 - Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6 - Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
7 - Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
8 - Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
11 - Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12 - Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
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