Friendly Letter Writing With RACK

We are enjoying our RACK Week this week and I'm taking the opportunity to throw in some Friendly Letter writing practice, which is always a good thing!

To read all about RACK Week, click HERE.

We first reviewed the parts of a Friendly Letter:

Our Anchor Chart was simple, but covered the necessary parts. Most of my students were familiar with the structure, but I am glad I made this for review and especially to help my strugglers with some sentence starters.

We then generated a list of school helpers who we thought would love a special delivery of RACK Letters at the end of the week. They came up with:

• the principal
• school nurse
• custodians
• office staff
• lunch ladies
• paras
• specials teachers
• librarian
• bus drivers
• and more!

We made a separate chart with all of their names, to help with spelling, and we began by choosing one and generating some descriptive words and phrases that told why we were so thankful for their help in our school.

They used the template from the Anchor Chart in their own Writer's Notebook to write a quick letter of thanks.

After they got an okay from me and some quick editing help, it was off to publish. I printed our RACK Letter two to a page so that I could save copies and have the blank illustrating page right nest to their letter. To learn more about how to do that, click HERE.

There letters are coming in now and they are so sweet! They have the parts of the letter down pat and they are able to develop their sentences much more, which is such a joy to read. I know that when we deliver these at the end of the week, the recipients will be so touched by the simple, yet sweet messages from the kids.

If you'd like to pick up the RACK Letter Freebie, click HERE.

Have fun using this additional tool with your RACK resources and enjoy this final week before break!