Remembrance Letters

Having organized about a dozen Remembrance assemblies I am always trying to come up with something to keep them somewhat fresh and engaging.  This year we completed a class partnered project with my class and Judy's class.  So the kids would be exposed to a partnered teaching experience and work in groups of 4 with a couple of students they hadn't worked with this year.  We met before hand to plan the project together and create balanced groups.  The project involved sharing real letters found online from soldiers to their loved ones from WWII.  I took half of the kids and Judy the other half, we read aloud 3 differnet letters each giving time for 2 of the 4 group members to discuss and record main ideas things that struck them as interesting (the other 2 members of the group were in the other classroom).  When they came back together they had to teach each other about the letters they'd heard, led to some good work in the groups.  Their task was to write a letter together as a group either to a soldier from home or from a soldier to home.  They were given a planning sheet (thanks for putting it together Judy!) that gave them headings to develop ideas under and made sure key elements/criteria were met.  They had to agree on and assign each member of the group a job (discuss each others strengths/share the load, jobs were: recorder, reporter, editor, manager.  They completed group/self evaluations on the provided checklist at the end.  The focus of the letters was to be creative, empathetic, use imagination to think about what wartime would be like for the people involved.  They wrote their lettters  and read them out to the large group.  The letters turned out really well.  Debriefing after the students really enjoyed the project and the opportunity to work with another class.  Judy and I then compiled the letters into just 2 class letters, one from a soldier, one to a soldier.  The results were surprisingly good.  Now we will have auditions for interested students to present these letters at our assembly this week.  Will be interesting to see what the response is to them.