Beginning of the Year Letters

One of my favorite beginning of the school year activities is for students to write a letter to their future selves.

I review components of a friendly letter and offer minimal support.  I use this as a chance to see their background skills in writing and guide my future mini-lessons.

The letters are pretty enlightening.  Yes, I get to see their writing skills and yes, it's clear to see which teachers didn't really emphasize writing in second grade.  It's also another chance to learn a little bit about them.  Several have told me that they want to be a teacher just like me, which is sweet.  Several have also shown me that they didn't follow directions with how to organize their paper, so that's been very helpful too.

I don't take a grade on the assignment, so that puts students at ease.  I do however, read each one and take notes about student strengths and weaknesses.  I record these notes in a Google doc so I can quickly access it from any school computer.  While it's more work to type the data in twice, it also means I don't have to lug around a huge stack of papers around to all my meetings.

After I make my way through this stack:

(I'm about half done)

I'll seal them in envelopes.  We took a "brain break" and decorated envelopes.  

(It was nice to give them a chance to be creative and exercise the right hemisphere of their brains.  I also know I have a very artistic and creative class, so they loved this opportunity.  Plus it was only 10 minutes, so it can't really be viewed as "wasted learning time".)

I then take the envelopes:

And  hide them until May.  A majority of my students forget about them, so it's a fun surprise at the end of the year.

Letters

We just sent the last progress report of the year (hallelujah!).  With it, I attached this note:

During the first week of school, I had students write notes to themselves to open during the last week of school.  Luckily I'm sure most of them have forgotten about this task, so it will be quite the surprise!

I asked their families to write them letters about how proud they are of all their academic growth this year.  I included stationary and an envelope to make it easy for them.

Here's one of the letters I got back:

In the past, many students cry upon reading these letters which is a touching moment.  Granted, some parents just send back blank stationary which is a little frustrating.  For those students, I will write them letters myself that way they have something to open.   I'm excited to make their last days of elementary school memorable!