Write a Letter to Future Students

Activity Summary

Students write a letter to future students who will study the topic/complete the project giving them advice.

Activity Plan

1

30 min

Ask students to write a letter to students who will study the topic/complete the project the next term or next year.

  • What should incoming students expect to learn?
  • What will they find most challenging?
  • What advice should they follow?
  • Allow time for students to share and discuss each other’s letters.

Please feel free to change the question to suit the needs of your class/subject/topic. Additionally, the students could answer this question orally in pairs or groups.

Tips & Tricks

  • Letter to Future Students can function as an ongoing learning log or learning journal, so at the end of term they have a consecutive series of logs that can be used for revision which can help students see connections across course content.
  • This is a useful end-of term/topic/project writing activity that asks students to consider their experience of the term/topic/project as a whole. This exercise offers the opportunity to explore and showcase self-development and personal growth; it offers them an opportunity to reflect on their learning and offer advice of what they might do differently or things that worked well for them.

Unspecified time

,

Individual

Setup and materials

Pen, paper

Intended Learning Outcomes

Evaluation of their own learning
Reinforcement of the topic/content they have explored previous to this
Analysing and synthesising the most important points of what they have learned so far and how they learned it

Pillars insight

Creativity

Students will activate their creative thinking by engaging with writing a letter for future students. Hereby their empathetic and creative thinking is activated. Furthermore, indirectly becoming their own coach through coming up with advice makes them engage with a creative problem solving mindset.

Co-creation

The students learn from each other's perspectives through sharing their letters with each other.

Well-being

Through training their reflective abilities, the students will over time become aware of their own learning progress, and learn how to enhance their own learning process.

Print or download

For better results, we recommend using Chrome or Edge. This method is not supported by Android devices.

When hitting the button, your browser dialogue box will open and you will see a preview of the activity sheet in print format. Select your printer if you want to print it on paper, select “Save as PDF” instead to generate a PDF file for download.