Write on Time: The Forgotten Craft of
Letter Writing for Kids
Remember the excitement and joy of receiving a handwritten letter in the mail from a friend or loved one?
To celebrate Children’s Week and History Month, we’re offering teachers resources to engage and inspire their students to learn the craft of letter writing. This is especially important at a time when it is difficult to meet in person due to COVID-19 restrictions. We’ve found letters written by children in the past to teach students how to write their own letters and to inspire children to learn from history. These letters cover students petitioning their local council to build a playground to writing to a children’s newspaper column.
“Letters to Aunt Patsy” video, lesson plan and resources are suitable for grades foundation to 3. Take me to this lesson, click here.
“Petitioning for a New Playground” video, lesson plan and resources are suitable for grades 3-6. Take me to this lesson, click here.
This Children’s Week activity is presented by Professional Historians Association (Vic and Tas) in partnership with the Victorian Government.
PHA (Vic & Tas) Members’ work in education history
As part of History Month and Children’s Week, our historians talk to children in the videos to share their knowledge of letter writing in the past and provide a context on specific historical letters. If you would like a historian to come to your school to talk history, email mail@phavic.org.au or view the wide and varied ways our members have engaged in school histories below.
Historians in Residence at schools
Alicia Cerreto, ‘Historian in Residence’ (2017), details here
Way Back When, ‘Historian in Residence: St Mary’s Primary School Dandenong 2018’, read more here
Education Curriculum Resources
HistorySmiths Pty Ltd., ‘Education Curriculum resources’, read more here
Jo Clyne et al. History 7: The Ancient World (2012); History 8: The Ancient to the Modern World (2013).
Publications - Education Histories
Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy, Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia, Cambridge Scholars, 2011; Children’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan (2019).
Emma Russell, with Alannah Croom and Carissa Goudey, The Victorian Teachers’ Union era of reform 1970-1995 (2018); Fairfield Primary School 2711, 1885 – 2010 (2010).
Claire Levi and Helen Penrose, Rising Pillars, Open Doors: A centenary history of Lowther Anglican Grammar School 1920-2020 (2020). See other education histories listed here.
Way Back When Consulting, Story and Place: 175 years of St Mary’s Primary School Williamstown (2017) see here for other education histories.
Catriona Banks, St Joseph's School Collingwood: 150th anniversary commemoration (2012). See other education histories listed here.
Dr Deborah Towns OAM, A Secondary Education for All?' A History of State Secondary Schooling in Victoria (2017) and others.
Presentations
Catriona Banks, A 125 Year History of St Patrick’s College in Ballarat (2019).
