Pennsylvania Students Write a Weekly Letter to Their Parents

From the Marshall Memo #424

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Pennsylvania teachers Terry Newman and Sarah Bizzarri describe how their fifth-grade team got students into a regular routine of writing a letter home about what they learned and how they behaved that week. When teachers introduced Friday letters at the beginning of the year, students immediately liked the idea and said they wanted their letters to tell their parents about all core subjects. 

Teachers wanted the letters to take no more than 30 minutes of classroom time. At the outset, they modeled the process:

• They thought aloud about what happened that week, brainstorming ideas with students and recording them;
• They had students number the ideas in the order in which they might be sequenced;
• They wrote an initial draft of the letter on chart paper, continuing to think aloud. 
• They read the chart-paper letter aloud.

Once students got the hang of the format, teachers used a shared-writing process: students generated the ideas themselves, decided on the sequence, and directed teachers as they wrote on chart paper.

Finally, students wrote their Friday letters independently, some with the help of an outline (Dear ---, This week at school I learned ----. My behavior during this past week was ----. One thing I really liked this week was ----. Love, ----). 

From that point on, teachers made a point of providing as little assistance as possible. “Aside from some peer collaboration during the writing of the Friday Letter,” say Newman and Bizzarri, “the students brainstormed, organized, and drafted the letters independently. We sent the letters  home ‘student perfect,’ meaning the best the student could do without teacher assistance. Student perfect enabled the students, parents, and teacher to better assess student progress over the course of the year. Student perfect also provided a clearer picture of what the student can do independently as a writer.”

In addition to providing an authentic writing task each week, the Friday Letters were an excellent way of communicating with parents about the curriculum and students’ progress. Teachers were pleasantly surprised by students’ willingness to talk about their behavior in the letters. “Students who did struggle with behavior issues took such pride when they were able to write to their parents stating that they had a great week,” say Newman and Bizzarri.

Finding the time to write the letters at the end of a busy week was always challenging. But seeing students’ enthusiasm, parents’ appreciation, and the way the letters clarified the week’s accomplishments, teachers made the time for something that had become a top priority.

“Friday Letters: Connecting Students, Teachers, and Families Through Writing” by Terry Newman and Sarah Bizzarri in The Reading Teacher, December 2011/January 2012 (Vol. 65, #4, p. 275-280), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/TRTR.01037/abstract; the authors can be reached at tlaanewman@comcast.net and sarahabizzarri@gmail.com.