As part of our writer’s workshop, “Letter to a Hero,” the learners dove a little bit deeper into the elements of a letter and the best practices that will help them write polished letters to their heroes. We began with a broad question: what are the most important parts of a letter? The learners were put into two groups and had 20 minutes to research, explore, and create a list of the important parts of a letter for discussion. As a group, they came up with the following:

• Date
• Sender’s Address Block
• Inside Address Block
• Greeting
• Introduction
• Body Paragraph(s)
• Closing/Call to Action
• Signature Block
• Postscript, if necessary 

With this list in hand, learners began practicing writing letters. To start a conversation about the importance of practice, the launch featured a short video of author Malcolm Gladwell discussing the “10,000 hour rule.” According to this “rule,” it takes about 10,000 hours of intentional practice to truly become a master of a craft (although recent research has challenged this, the point about intentional practice still holds).

Now, while the learners might not have 10,000 hours to practice writing letters, they’ll get as much time as we can give them! In that spirit, learners put pencil to paper and wrote short letters to hand deliver to someone in their lives. Learners wrote to everyone from neighbors, to friends at Acton, to family members (some of you might have received a letter from your learner). Though they wrote letters to different people, they all intentionally practiced proper formatting and use of all of the brainstormed elements of a letter.

By practicing with intentionality, learners can turn these good habits of letter writing into standards that they put into every draft in the future. When it comes time to send out final drafts of letters to heroes, learners will be well on their way to mastery.