Lesson Idea - Mail is mystifying to many children!

Have you ever given a thought to how your students communicate as opposed to how you used to communicate?  The digital age is taking over and "snail mail" can be an unknown quantity for children these days! Apart from a birthday card, a christmas card and perhaps a bank statement everty six months our students rarely recieve mail let alone send any!  They have no idea of how to address an envelope, how much a stamp costs and sometimes not even where their nearest mailbox is.

Learning about Mail is a marvellous way to introduce many concepts about the world around them and easy to relate to many curriculum areas.

Literacy is clear cut as it's reading, writing and composition.  It's also a way to explore systems (how does mail work?), transport (How many ways can mail travel?), geography (where does mail come from or go) among other things.

Occasionally, when I need an improptu lesson, mail is an easy and engaging place to take my students.

How does a letter "work"?

Well, for this we need an Envelope!

This video on Youtube

I've tried a number of ways and this simple envelope is easy enough for students to make themselves and is robust enough to deal with how a preppie folds a letter!  All you need is an A4 sheet of white paper, a pair of scissors and a glue stick!  No printing or photocopying required ;).

Why do we need an envelope?  

• This protects our letter from getting dirty and also from damage.  
• It keeps the contents of our letter private.
• It lets us write the address of where it's going without writing on our nice neat letter.

So, how do we make sure the postman knows where the letter is going?

Addressing guidelines:  Australia Post Website.

We write an address on the letter so the postman knows where it's going and we write a return address on the envelope in case it gets lost and needs to be returned to us.

What are the 4 coloured boxes for?

This is where the postcode goes.  Everyone living close together has the same postcode.  This is to make it easy for the letter to get to the right postman so he can sort and deliver the mail.

There are machines that can read this postcode if it is in the right place so they put boxes on the envelope to show us where to put it.  The machines sort most of the mail for the postman after he collects the mail so he can send it off to the right postcode so it gets to the right postman so he can sort and deliver the mail.

We pay for our email by paying for our internet, but how do we pay for our letters?

We pay for our mail by buying stamps.  When we put a stamp on our envelope the postman can see that we've paid him to deliver our mail.  This stamp has a place on our letter so the postman can find it easily.

What can you send?

Letters and pictures just like with email.  You can also send items by putting them in parcels and packages.

How does mail travel?

Does your postie deliver mail by walking, on a motorbike, in a car or in a van?  Mail can also travel on a train, in a truck on a boat or in a plane.

It all sounds very simple to us who grew up in an age where it was much more common but to today's children this can be a world of new wonders!  Some of your students will never have sent or recieved a letter of their own and it can be quite a foreign concept which you can capitalize on to capture their attention for a writing exercise or craft by making an envelope and designing their own stamp.

There's a awful lot of places you can go with a letter ;)

Regards,

Mel.