lett, jade and lairsey, brooke. gps: ela5w4: the student consistently uses a writing process to...

Lett, Jade and Lairsey, Brooke

PLO: The students will successfully complete a graphic organizer that they will use to write a simulated letter.


Simulated letters are “pretend” letters that are not actually sent to the person you are writing to. The author of the letter pretends that they are someone else. For example, a character in a book or a historical figure.


Simulated letters will begin with the date. This is known as the heading.

Next, you will need a greeting, which can start with Dear or just the persons name that you are writing to. After the greeting you will need a comma.


After the greeting, you will begin to write the main part of your letter which is the body.

Next is the closure of the letter. This is where you end your letter. For example, you could use yours truly or sincerely to end your letter.

The last thing you will do to complete your letter is sign your name.


The first stage of the writing process is the prewriting stage. This stage is extremely important when writing a well developed letter. There are three important points to prewriting.


Who are you writing to? This is the first idea that you need to think about before you start your letter. You need to decide on your audience.

What is the purpose of the body of your letter? This is the second thing that you need to think about before writing letter. You will need to decide if you are trying to persuade, inform, invite, entertain, or thank your audience (the person you are writing your letter to.)


How will you bring your letter to a close? You need to think about how you are going to end your letter. How are you going to bring everything in your letter to an end.

There will be a graphic organizer that you will complete. This will organize your three points.


Lett, K.J. (2007). Prewriting Graphic Organizer for Simulated Letters. Unpublished manuscript, graphic organizer, Valdosta State Univeristy, Valdosta GA.


Ahlberg, J. & Ahlberg, A. (2006). The Jolly Postman, or Other People’s Letters. Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company.

This book shows students several examples of simulated letters.

I will show the students an example of a simulated letter that it written to Mr. Wolf. This example shows the students that they must stay in character while writing their letters. This example shows the correct format for a letter.


Since the students have been learning about Christopher Columbus’s journey to the new world, the students will pretend that they are aboard one of Columbus’s three ships. They will imagine that they are sending a letter home to their families. As a class the students will help me fill out my own graphic organizer on the board. This will give the students an opportunity to practice filling out a graphic organizer.


Each student will be given a blank graphic organizer that they will individually plan their simulated letter on. They will write to President Bush explaining their feelings and attitudes about the 9/11 attacks.



PLO: Students will create a rough draft of their simulated letter.

Simulated letters are “pretend” letters that are not actually sent to the person you are writing to. The author of the letter pretends that they are someone else. For example a character in a book or a historical figure.


Simulated letters will begin with the date. This is known as the heading.

Next you will need a greeting, which can start with Dear or just the persons name that you are writing to. After the greeting you will need a comma.


After the greeting, you will begin to write the main part of your letter which is the body.

Next is the closure of the letter. This is where you end your letter. For example you could use yours truly or sincerely to end your letter.

The last thing you will do to complete your letter is sign your name.


The second stage of the writing process is the drafting stage. Drafting is turning the ideas from your graphic organizer into complete thoughts and sentences.

The students will use their graphic organizer from their pre-writing stage to complete a rough draft.



Colbert, C. (1998). Dear Dr. King: Letters from Today’s Children to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. New York, NY: Hyperion Books for Children

This book gives many examples of letters from children written to Dr. King. These letters demonstrate a different type of simulated letter. This gives students examples of simulated letters that are written from their own point of view.


Since the students have been learning about Christopher Columbus’s journey to the new world, the students will pretend that they are aboard one of Columbus’s three ships. They will imagine that they are sending a letter home to their families. As a class we will discuss the format of the letter. I will use the graphic organizer that we had previously filled out as a class to model how to write a draft of my simulated letter. This will give students the opportunity to practice turning thoughts from a graphic organizer to sentences in their drafts.


The student will use the graphic organizer from the prewriting stage about their feelings on September 11th to draft their simulated letters. Their draft will include a greeting, three main points, how the events affected them, and a closing.


lett, jade and lairsey, brooke. gps: ela5w4: the student consistently uses a writing process to...

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