This lesson will help build high school students’ writing skills and also give them practice with sharing their feelings. High school students too often keep their feelings bottled up inside. Thus writing about their feelings is therapeutic for them. This project gives students a way to tell their grandparents how important they are to them. This lesson also gives the teacher a way to assess student writing skills.
Help students start a very special project that may become a family heirloom. Ask them to bring a writing journal into class to begin the project.
Inform the class the lesson will involve creating a Grandparents’ Journal to fill with letters from the student to the grandparent and from the grandparent to the teenager. Give the students time to brainstorm a list of at least 5 ideas for topics they will discuss in the letter to their grandparents.
Inform them if they have more than one set of grandparents they should start the journal in class for one set and create another journal at home for the other set of grandparents.
Mention to the class that if a student does not have grandparents they should create a journal with their parents or any other elder relative of their choice.
Let students sit in groups for this project. Tell the students that they will participate in peer editing during this lesson. It will also be helpful for them to brainstorm ideas together. Sometimes students are shy about expressing their feelings but if they see other students doing it the task becomes easier.
Give writing tips to the students such as:
- Write about why the grandparents are important in your life.
- Describe what a special event spent with the grandparents meant to you.
- Describe the fun of visiting the grandparents.
- Tell how the grandparents have inspired you in career or personal dreams for your life.
- Tell the grandparents how much you love them and why.
- Ask the grandparents to write about what their lives were like when they were your age.
- Ask the grandparents to write about how they met their spouse and fell in love.
- Ask the grandparents to write about how the world has changed since when they were small.
Circulate the room while students are writing. Go over their letters with them and give advice about being sure to specifically state the feelings they have for the grandparent. Students should also describe specific events they have shared that are special memories. Remind students that strong writing is always specific and includes facts.
Ask students to use literary devices such as imagery and alliteration in their writing. Discuss several examples of each writing technique with the class. These writing tools make writing stronger and more memorable.
When a student has a draft of the first letter to their grandparents ask them to have a friend “peer edit” it. The peer edit process should involve checking for proper sentence structure, word usage, and overall impact of the letter. Each student should get feedback on the letter draft from a friend and the teacher.
Discuss with the class how time passes rapidly and Grandparents are a precious part of life. Encourage teenagers to have Grandparents document their lives via journal writing, making videos, and sending letters to grandchildren.
When grading this project assess writing skills, team work skills, peer editing effort, and the overall participation in the project of creating a journal to give to grandparents.
Assign projects throughout the year that help students document their family history. Grandparents and other relatives have much valuable information about past events in the family. Help students work to preserve this information forever.
