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Using Email
(By Michele Papageorghiou)
What Genre Activities
Can Be Performed Using E-Mail?
If you were studying
procedural texts it would be beneficial to the children
to show them a variety of different kinds of texts such
as a car repair manual, recipes, washing instructions on
clothes etc.
Why do we use them? How do they differ from rules and
regulations? What different types are there? Why use
diagrams?
Ask the children to devise
a procedure. It could be how to play a simple game for
example.
Young writers assume that there is shared knowledge
between reader and writer and consequently do not include
all the necessary details to successfully carry out the
procedure. They need to be reminded that the text should
be clear, concise, well structured and with sufficient
detail to ensure the task can be accomplished.
The procedure could be e-mailed to their ‘cyber
buddy’ in the partner school to try out. The friend
could then try out the game and report on the success of
the procedure (a recount)
A class book of games could perhaps be published on a web
site.
As a result of the
presentation which this web-site is based on, the
audience devised some activities which use e-mail to
teach different kinds of genre. Their responses are
listed below:
| Type
of Text |
Contributors of
Activity |
Activity |
| Stories |
Tammy Louise Leech, Katie Melia, Mandy
Jeffrey |
Compose a story with a cyber friend. Each
child can write one sentence of the story, and
pass it on to their friend who will add another
sentence. The activity can continue in this way
until they decide that the story is finished. |
| Information
Reports |
Jo and Cheryl |
Email the authorities, schools, businesses or
any other relevant people, asking for information
on a particular topic (possibly one they are
studying in school). This information can then be
written out as a report and published. |
| Recounts |
Keeley May, Richard Kirby and Emma Jenkins |
Children can condense a story into bullet
points / note-form. They can then retell this
information to a neighbour, and even send it to a
cyber-friend via email. This is an ideal way of
encouraging children to engage in book reviewing. |
| Procedures |
|
The children can write out a list of
instructions telling others how to email. This
can the be pasted next to the computer for easy
reference. |
A scheme of work based on emailing can also be found
here.
Click here to continue.
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