Gratitude is the Thing

November is the month where we talk about gratitude. We've got Veterans Day and Thanksgiving - both holidays that are not only acknowledged but celebrated in our public schools. For our enrichment lab, I wanted to further the dialogue about gratitude so I suggest to my supervising teacher that we do a letter writing project to our armed forces. I did some research and found out about Operation Gratitude, which sends gift boxes to the Armed Forces. Each box includes a personal letter of thanks. This was the perfect organization for us to go though to conduct a writing assignment that would be true service learning. I found some leveled letter templates at Teachers Pay Teachers that worked for this project and the kids got to work:

I introduced each lesson with vocabulary:

1. Gratitude - what in the word is that? The attitude of being thankful! Many students did not know this word going into the lesson. Students then shared with one another something they were thankful for. 

2. Armed Forces - who are they? What do they do? We briefly discussed the different branches of the military and also discussed the difference between active duty, the reserves and veterans. 

We watched a short video of soldiers talking about what it is like to not receive correspondence from home and how much children's letters mean to them. 

Then, with leveled guidance depending on the grade (kindergarten & 1st grades copied an example whereas 2nd-5th grade wrote their own letters), the students composed letters that thanked our Armed Forces and also shared information about themselves. They worked so diligently and in some classes you could have heard a pin drop the students were so very focused. I was proud of their dedication to the project. 

Another component was that we also made holiday cards to go to wounded military who will be in the hospital during the holiday season. The pictures and messages of the cards were so heartfelt! In all, the school composed over 600 cards and letters to send out to our Armed Forces. I was incredibly proud of their work and dedication and thrilled that we could lead a project like this!