Ask a Teacher

Q: Could you give me an idea of a summer activity I could do with my children that is
inexpensive, and one in which they would keep up their academic skills?

A: Pen pal letters appear on the surface not to be anything more than just fun, but in reality have
many educational benefits:

  • A student’s sentence structure and vocabulary escalate when writing has a purpose. The
    purpose being getting to know another person AND anticipating a letter in return.
  • Writing a letter properly requires planning so that thoughts flow in some type of sequence
    in order to make sense. Help your child edit before sending the letter. Vary sentence
    structure.
  • When receiving a letter, a student reads different sentence structures. He/She also learns
    about the life of a peer in another location. Let’s say a pen pal is from Africa. Now social
    studies enters the picture, and excitement will be in the air.
  • Comprehension of the contents of the letter is a must so the return letter can address
    anything the pen pal needs addressed.
  • The ability to decode words is necessary in order to read the contents of the letter.
  • When a student is writing to a REAL person he/she want to use neat penmanship.
  • Most standardized tests have one to three questions dealing with the format of a letter
    and/or its punctuation.

When I was a general education teacher, my second graders had pen pals every year. My
student’s written expression skills always improved by leaps and bounds during the exchange of
letters. Ask your children’s teachers if they have a website or websites that they use to get pen
pals around the world. If you go to the Internet for pen pals, please make sure it is a safe
website. Have fun!
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Encouraging
Women With
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Nancy has been an educator for 30 years and is currently a special education teacher.  
She is the former Center Director of LearningRx in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has
received local, state, and national recognition for her development of Downfeld
Phonics, a multi-sensory reading program.  Nancy also wrote curriculum for an
educational technology company.   

Nancy is a single mother of three children:  one with learning differences, one gifted,
and one who has to work for his grades.  Not only does she know what it is like to teach
all these different learning styles at school, but she has the experience of dealing with
all aspects of each twenty-four seven.  
Copyright © 2011 Nancy Downing. All rights reserved.
Photo © Ilya Genkin | Dreamstime.com
Pen Pals
by Nancy Downing
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