Lessonplan E-mail Projects

Hello everybody,

in last week’s session we talked about the question of how to realize e-mail projects with year 5 students of English. First of all, we discussed some possibilities of facilitating e-mail writing in English and came up with the following ideas:

Preparing an Email Project

• You can offer vocabulary that helps the students (e.g. vocabulary lists, dictionaries)
• You can provide them with typical phrases.
• You can teach them how to introduce oneself so that they have a good starting point for their first e-mail.
• You might choose a partner group that also consists of beginners (e.g. English learners of German). They will have similar problems in writing German e-mails so that your students do not have to be afraid of making too many mistakes since their partner will not write perfect e-mails, either.
• You should offer a topic so that your students know what to write about.
• You might decide to have them write e-cards because in e-mails short texts look quite lost. In e-cards, your student can also write shorter messages and also design them in a more personal way.
• You might want to use e-mail templates which the students to find an appropriate structure for their e-mail.

Finding a partner group

Afterwards we talked about the question of how to find an appropriate partner group for your class. Here are some websites that might help you:

www.epals.com

http://etwinning.net

We used the first website. It is quite uncomplicated to find a partner group there because the groups are listed according to topics they want to deal with. Consequently, you can easily search for a group that talks about a similar topic. We were asked to choose something that corresponded to the following topics from the Hessian curriculum: Living – Leisure Time – Family and finally came up with the topic “pets”. We found a Greek class that was suitable as an imaginary partner group for our class.

Lesson plan

Finally, we designed the following lesson plan on the topic pets for year 5 students (first year of English).

First phase

The topic of the first session is introducing oneself and getting to know each other. For the e-mail project the class is divided into groups of 2 or 3 students one of which must have a pet. We assume that the students have already been provided with e-mail lists and typical phrases before starting the actual e-mail project. In the first session they write an e-mail in which they introduce themselves as well as their school, city and their class. They are encouraged to use pictures and other material as well. The partner class is expected to do the same. Since our imaginary partner group is a Greek one it makes sense that both groups write in English. If the partner group was an English-speaking one, it would be a good idea if they wrote their e-mails in German.

Second phase

In the second session, there should be a kind of research phase. The groups should collect information about their own pets (what pets do the students have, where do they live, collecting pictures or videos showing the pets, maybe also virtual pets). They should structure the information and write an e-mail to their partner group introducing their pets to them. The partner group is expected to do the same.

Third phase

The third phase consists of a comparison. The students compare the pets of their Greek partners to their own pets: What pets do the Greek students have? Do they have the same pets or completely different ones? How do pets in Greek live and how are they treated, there? The students are expected to create posters summing up their results and present them to the other groups. The posters are put up in the classroom so that the students can always look at them. The Greek partner group should, again, do the same. The German and Greek groups should exchange e-mails in which they write about their results. They should also send a picture of their posters to each other.

Fourth phase

The fourth phase involves a discussion. After presenting their posters to their classmates, the students should discuss the results of the different groups: Did the groups have similar results or did they vary? Differences between boys and girls? Etc. The partner group does, again, the same. The students might write an e-mail summing up the result of the discussion.

Fifth phase

In the final phase, the students draw a conclusion from the e-mail project. On the one hand, the students should sum up the most important things they learned from the project. These results should be put down in a final Power Point Presentation created by the entire class as a common result. On the other hand, there should be a reflexion about the project: How did the students like the project? Did they find it interesting/helpful? Do they have any suggestions of how do improve future projects? The class should write a joint e-mail to the partner class summing up their final results. They should attach the Power Point presentation to it. Furthermore, the groups should write personal “good-bye” e-mails. They should, of course also have a look at the Power Point presentation created by their partner class.

How do you like our lesson plan? Do you think it makes sense to conduct such a project?