MentorMail Project Proposal
Teacher’s Name: _Mr, Coleman_______________________
School District: _Shawnee Mission________________________ School: _Prairie Elementary_________
Number of Students: ___23______ Grade Level of Students: ______3rd _______________
Summary of Proposed Project:
I would like to have my 3rd grade students correspond with professional adults in the Kansas City community at large as a way to expand and deepen the curriculum objectives of Shawnee Mission. 3rd grade social studies objectives are focused upon the community and the students’ place in that community. This includes the history of the area (Prairie Village and Kansas City as a whole), the important people that have shaped the area, the way in which various people and agencies interact with and support each other (businesses, government, neighborhoods, law enforcement, etc), as well as the different characteristics of rural, urban, and suburban communities.
In addition to connecting with people actually in the community, the MentorMail project also fulfills a deficit in student writing and language development. Often, writing assignments in the classroom are necessarily limited in a number of crucial ways. First, student writing is usually piecemeal and limited to, at best, a spectrum that is anchored at one end by fill-in-the-blank worksheets and at the other end by short answer sentences that never go far beyond basic fact recall or application. Second, student writing is not on going - it only answers a question and never pushes the student beyond fulfilling the question to be answered. Third, there is a disconnect with reality in terms of how students approach writing; in a world of computers, e-mails, and word processors, students in classrooms practice their writing by hand and have little time to compose and edit in the way most adults do in our society. Mentormail excites and challenges my teaching in that it meets and answers each of these issues: Students will be corresponding with people out in a community that they are studying in class. These e-mails will be weekly and will provide a continuation of thought, dialogue, and learning with the adult volunteers. The students will have a purposeful connection that closely resembles how people communicate in the real world – using a computer, word processor, and e-mail to write and edit.
Monthly themes will provide an overall guide for the students. However, in keeping with the idea of a continuation in the exchanges, students will not have isolated or “canned” themes that they must right about each week/month. Instead, I would like to have the e-mails stand as an on-going communication between the students and the adult out in the community. Past the first few weeks of “getting to know you” writing, I would like the kids to have the adults as a sounding board or reference point for the escalating study of community we undertake over the course of the year. This means that as we look at community in various ways, we would be writing to our e-mentors for their take on our studies, their place in our studies, or for their perspective. As such, a monthly outline might include the following (notes: under each theme there are possible writing topics – these would be in addition to the students sharing what they have learned in class. Also, I am making an assumption that the e-mentors will be from a business, if mentor pool comes from somewhere else – university, government, etc – then all relevant business questions/topics will be adjusted accordingly):
- Students learn the important elements of a community - the way people work together for common goals within government, the role of businesses, and the community formed by people living near each other in a city.
- Writing topics might include: The mentor’s business, how the mentor came to be at the business, what the business does for the community, other roles and positions the mentor has in the community.
- Students learn of the different type of communities: rural, suburban, and urban. Students will compare and contrast these types of areas.
- Writing topics might include: The location of the mentor’s business, advantages and disadvantages of placing a business in each of these areas, what general area does the mentor live in, where has mentor lived before.
- Students will be involved in in-depth study of Prairie Village community. Class will use workbook created by the city that looks at all elements studied at the start of the year in reference to Prairie Village.
- Writing topics might include: Any competing businesses in Prairie Village area with mentor’s business, would mentor’s business do better or worse in Prairie Village community, how do businesses end up in a certain community compared to any other.
- Students visit the Jazz and Negro Baseball League Museum.
- Writing topics might include: History of the mentor’s business, accomplishments and struggles of the business (related to how jazz music and the Negro League were a result of segregation but also marked an accomplishment for the people involved), ways in which mentor’s business supports community in Kansas City (arts, sports, volunteer opportunities).
- Students begin overall study of Kansas City history. Look at the importance of the joining of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, the Lewis and Clark expedition, early settlers, and the growth of Kansas City, including early trading posts, the stockyards, the depression area, jazz, sports, etc.
- Writing topics might include: How is mentor’s business connected to the mid-west, the country and the world, ways in which mentor’s business has changed over time, future plans for mentor’s business.
- Students write and interview of Famous Kansas Citian, drawing out the importance of people who have shaped the city.
- Writing topics might include: How did mentor prepare for his or her career, what family background helped them towards the business they work for, what education and work experience led to current business, where would mentor like to be in the future in the business.
- Students create Box city as a culminating art project where they recreate many of the elements of a community in miniature. After studying architecture in Art class, students make a personal residence, a business, and work in small groups to make larger elements of a community (public utilities, parks, government, malls, zoo, airport, movie theaters, etc.). All elements must be planned out and made by the students.
- Writing topics might include: Ideas from mentor for type of house, business, and group project, share photos of mentor’s business to include it in box city.
- Students take a guided tour of Kansas City as a grade level field trip. Travel guide takes 3rd graders to places such as Quality Hill, Lewis and Clark Point, Union Station, Liberty Memorial, The Plaza, the Kaufmann Gardens, City Market, the land where the stockyards had been located, and visits to the Hannibal Bridge site.
- Writing topics might include: Mentor’s share locations in Kansas City that are important to them, which of these places have the mentor’s been to, would the mentor’s have added any places to our trip, does the mentor’s business have a connection to any of the places we visit.
Briefly describe the event.
Target Start Date: _mid-September ____________Target End Date: __May 2009_________________
• select an idea on which to write
• organize a writing piece around an idea
• organize a draft with beginning, middle, end
• revise writing with assistance focusing on the content
• edit for conventions (capitalization, end punctuation, spelling)
• write a final copy that is neat and on the lines
• publish and share with audience other than teacher
• write descriptive pieces (poetry, journal entry, learning log)
• write narrative pieces (creative story, personal narrative, letter)
• write expository pieces (list, math problem, directions, reports)
• write complete sentences
• capitalize proper nouns and the beginning of sentences
• use correct ending punctuation
• use commas in a series
• use correct spelling of commonly used words
• paragraphing is obvious
How will you introduce the project to your students?
Who will monitor the electronic correspondence?
- Know the parts of a letter (friendly and business)
- Write using proper spelling and grammar
- Work with a partner to proofread and revise letters
- Compose complete sentences and proper paragraphs
- Understand computer and word processor skills
- Write on a theme (i.e. describing to a mentor what the student has been studying and then asking relevant questions of the mentor)
- Articulating classroom learning to mentor and then sharing with class any relevant information from mentor’s e-mails
- Maintaining schedule of writing e-mails and responding to e-mails
E-mentoring is more successful if the students and mentors meet at least once during the school year. During what time period will your event take place? _ Beginning of September________
E-Mentors will be invited to the classroom for a meet and greet at the start of September. I would not want to start the project until students had a chance to meet the people they will be writing to. This will put faces with names and I imagine both the students and e-mentors will find more motivation and connection having sat and talked. The meeting will be fairly structured, with kids doing a mock interview and then telling the class about their e-mentor. We could have snacks and the e-mentors will be able to take pictures of their student back with them.
Students will be expected to send___3 or 4____ messages per _month____________.
Will the messages meet a classroom expectation/benchmark? If yes, please describe: Yes, primarily the following Shawnee Mission Objectives will be met (in addition to other general writing objectives):
Language Arts:1003.11 – Apply a writing process that includes preparation, drafting revising, editing, and publishing to produce a written document.
1003.12 – Use different modes of writing for different purposes and audiences.
1003.19 – Use standard American English.
Will students receive a grade for exchanging messages with their mentors?
Yes, students will be graded on curriculum objectives listed above, their effort, for staying on-topic, and for completing and sending e-mails.
How will you verify that students check their MentorMail accounts?
We will use computer lab time twice a week as a time to check MentorMail accounts.
MentorMail will be introduced as part of the social studies lessons at the start of the year when we look at how we will be studying the Prairie Village and Kansas City community. It will be presented as an on going opportunity to take classroom learning and reach out into the community for real-word connections. The program will be considered part of the language arts and social studies work that happens during the course of the year.
I will monitor all e-mails to and from the school. As I understand it, I will also have a software program that will flag certain items for review. I will use this as an additional line of safety and monitoring.
Mentor Qualifications (engineers, college students, professionals, retirees)
Although much of this project proposal is based upon using people working at a business as mentors, the overall objective of using e-mentoring is to connect with the community at large. As a result, if the pool of mentors were drawn from a different source most, if not all, of the structure of the proposal would stay intact. Ideally, the best mentors would be from a business but would hold a variety of positions within the business – from custodial to management.
What are your expectations of the mentors (frequency of messages, classroom visits, classroom presentations, etc.)?
I would like to have the mentors come once at the start of the year, once at the end of the year and they will be invited to several events during the year as a courtesy (but attendance would be informal, basically to see student work related to our study of community). I hope the 3 times a month for the exchange of messages is an appropriate amount. Adjustments can always be made but anything less than 3 times would start to lose much of the continuity of dialogue and study that the proposal is based upon.
What are the goals and objectives of the project?
The goals of the project are to provide students with the opportunity to use technology and writing skills to reach out into the community for a counterpoint to their classroom learning. The social studies and language arts curriculum is enriched by finding mentors that can offer real world and personal perspectives on our study of the Prairie Village and Greater Kansas City community. The students will be writing, editing, and sending correspondence in a manner that reflects the skills adults actually use in their work and personal lives. The entire project raises classroom instruction and activities to a level that draws students out into the community using the methods and tools that will serve them through their lives.
How will you measure success?
Success will be measured by the students’ ability to:
