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Looking for ways to engage your students in online literacy learning? Find more interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals-from organizing their thoughts to learning about language.
|Grades||K – 8|
|Interactive Type||Writing & Publishing Prose|
|ABOUT THIS INTERACTIVE|
The Postcard Creator helps students learn to identify all the typical parts of a postcard, and then generate their own postcard messages by typing information into templates. Students fill in the address, details on the postcard's artwork, and the postcard message. The finished postcard can then be previewed, edited, and printed. After printing their texts, students can illustrate the front of their postcards in a variety of ways, including drawing a picture, creating a collage of images, or printing and pasting clipart in place.
The tool is easy to use, made even easier with the Postcard Planning Sheet, a printable PDF students can use to draft and revise their work before creating and printing their final postcards on the computer. See a completed sample Postcard based on Where the Wild Things Are for details on what a student's work might look like.
Lessons That Use This Interactive
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Students won’t miss a beat in this musical lesson that combines listening with personal response on a postcard.
Grades 1 – 3 | Lesson Plan | Minilesson
Students consider the perspectives of central but silent characters in Stevie (Steptoe, 1968), gaining much deeper understandings of the story and realizing that every story truly gives a partial account.
Grades 4 – 7 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
In this alternative to the traditional book report, students report on their novel choices that feature journeys by creating postcards one of the settings featured in their books.
Related Classroom & Professional Development Resources
Grades K – 12 | Student Interactive | Writing & Publishing Prose
The Letter Generator is a useful tool for students to learn the parts of a business or friendly letter and then compose and print letters for both styles of correspondence.
Grades K – 6 | Calendar Activity |  December 21
Students brainstorm words or images that they associate with winter, select and read a picture book about winter, and compare the two using the interactive Venn Diagram.
Grades 1 – 6 | Calendar Activity |  January 17
Students discuss Benjamin Franklin's contributions to postal history, investigate the roles of the Postmaster General, and write letters to their classmates using the Letter Generator.