Third Grade Journals

Every other Friday (or end of the school week), each student in my class writes a letter home to his/her parents. The students write about their past two weeks in school, something they are thankful for and something they did nice for someone else over the past two weeks. Over the weekend or next week, the parents write a short letter back to their child. This not only works on letter writing, but it fosters a deeper relationship between the student and his/her parents. The kids really look forward to reading the responses each week. Parents- please remember that your child may have difficulty reading cursive handwriting still, so you may wish to print most of your responses.

Here are copies of the pages from our Weekly Journal.

My Third Grade Journal Cover
Student Letter to Parents
Parents' Response to Child

These pages are just the text. I add clipart and graphics to them before sending the pages to our district printer. I have the Student Letter and Parents' Response pages run back-to-back. I also paste the cover onto construction paper and laminate the cover and a plain piece of construction paper for the back. I put 20 pages in a journal and bind the journal together for the students. I keep the journals in a crate at the back of my room.

Graphics from www.thistlegirldesigns.com.