Post Office Project

Teacher

Mrs. Perkins

Program

Oak Terrace School

Age Group

1st Grade

Phase I

The topic of the post office was chosen after a brainstorming session about our neighborhood in which several students mentioned that their parents mailed bills at the post office. When questioned further, some students had more knowledge than others about the post office, but had a common thread that all their parents mailed/received bills and/or letters. Since students differed in their knowledge, we explored the topic of a post office further by generating questions we had about the post office. The class decided to investigate the question of how letters were mailed. My expectations for the project were for students to gain further knowledge of how letters were mailed and the importance of the post office for communities.

Students began the project by investigating how letters are mailed within our building. We visited the school office to see teachers’ mailboxes and how letters were sorted. For our site visit, we visited our local post office. Before our visit students wrote their parents a letter to be mailed on our visit. During our walk to the post office, students were asked to tally the number of mailboxes they saw on the way. The local postmaster served as our expert in the field. He explained the importance of stamps and gave all of us a stamp to mail our letters. He showed us the P.O. boxes and also explained the behind-the-scenes steps that take place in order for letters to get to their destination. Our investigation questions did not change much although students were really excited to see the different stamps and to get to put stamps on their letters! The different style stamps were valuable to see as was seeing how the mail got sorted. Parents were invited to attend the field trip with students (3 attended) and they were also invited to share their experiences with the post office and its importance to them to the class. Children represented their learning through drawings and play environments.

Phase II

Phase III

Our class post office project has not officially ended. Although the initial excitement has worn off, students really enjoy the idea of sending and receiving letters and we have incorporated it into our daily writing center. Students take turns sorting the mail and delivering it within our school. They take pride in being responsible for an important task and it has served as a motivation for some students. Students learned so much from this project. Aside from reinforcing the writing and reading skills, the post office project reinforced that writing is a way to communicate and share thoughts and ideas.

 

Teacher Reflection

“As a teacher I learned that project based learning is a valuable tool for students and teachers. At first, giving students the freedom to choose a topic to study was a bit daunting, especially for first graders. I soon realized that when students have the freedom to make that choice, they take more responsibility and ownership of their learning. I think the post office project was a good topic because it reinforced the important meaning behind reading and writing. I think all of the students in our class benefitted from the experience, but there was one in particular that surprised me. This particular student had a very difficult time writing and putting his thoughts on paper. He needed his own space and support from the teacher to generate ideas. After dictating his thoughts I would write them in his journal and he would copy them. During this project, he became more interested in writing and wanted to sit at his own table. After some time he then asked me not to help him, he wanted to write on his own. To my surprise he was able to generate his own ideas and attempt to write them as he could. He started to visit the writing center more to write letters to his friends and to me. If I could do anything differently in this project, I would include more classrooms or the entire school to work as a post office. Making this a central theme for our school would make it more cohesive and inviting for the school community.”
 

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