Sending Exercises as Attachments

Introduction:

Along with editing their own work, students also benefit from editing sample writing. Teachers can engineer documents that help to reinforce a specific rule or grammar structure. For example, students could be given a story typed without any capital letters and asked to correct the capitalization. The act of making the corrections will help them to remember the rule.

If you are working with many students, distributing typed documents to all students can be a tricky, time consuming task. If your computers are networked together there is probably a common computer (file server) where you can place the document and everyone can access it. This is a fairly easy process if you only need to put one copy on the file server and everyone opens their own copy from the original. If this option isn't available to you, you may want to consider emailing each student the document as an attachment.

Before attempting this exercise, students should have experience sending and receiving regular emails and editing their own typing. They could also practice opening and sending attachments that don't require any editing. You could send them a document and ask them to answer some questions based on what they read. Students could also practice sending you some of their work as an attachment.

Procedure:

1. Type up a document to be edited such as a resume.
2. Type an email message to your students describing what they need to do to the document. For example,
   1. Open the attachment.
   2. Save it on your disk.
   3. Change st. to Street in the address.
   4. Change the Job Goal from babysitter to Child Care Worker.
   5. Add "punctual" to the list of Additional Qualifications.
   6. Bold the Job Titles.
   7. Cut and paste the job at Sears so it is at the top of the Work Experience section.
   8. Capitalize the title References.
   9. Save the changes.
   10. Start a new email.
   11. Attach the new document.
   12. Send it to your teacher.
3. Attach the document to be edited to your email.
4. Send the email to all of your students.
5. When they have made the changes they could email the new document back to you. (You may find that it is easier and faster to check their work from a printed copy instead.)