November 2009     I recently received an email from a relieving teacher, Jim, who has recently taken a class at a school in Melbourne’s West.  The school is a large school with a multicultural population, and many new immigrants.  The Grade 3 / 4 class he taught had had several teachers during the year and was experiencing low morale.

Jim related an inspiring story of how he engaged his class in an activity where they drew a stamp from a catalogue and wrote a letter to Australia Post.  This creative teacher wanted to share this story and some of the great work produced by his students in what was a challenging exercise for them.

There were two students in particular, Keitia and Milad, whose work was passed on to me.

Keitia writes ‘My favourite number is four because there are four people in my family...My favourite colour is black... the stamp is of a man holding a torch in the Olympic games.  It has the Southern Cross and a price.  It has Australia at the top of it and five rings’.

Milad writes ‘I am 11 years old I like colour blue and I like to go to Post Office.  My lucky number is 3 and 7...I come from Iraq...yesterday I did something about Australia... it was badges of N.S.W, Victoria and Tasmania.’

Jim shares with us some instructions on how to engage students or kids at home through this activity:

• Find an image of stamp(s) from a catalogue, or the stamp itself(collect ones not too marred by overprinting), to copy. If you have a magnifying glass that can add to the fun.
• Firstly, the child has to draw a frame inside an A4 sheet of paper, leaving a 1 cm approx. border all the way around. Explain how the drawing will have to be vertically or horizontally oriented depending on the stamp being copied.  Don't make the items in the drawing too small or too big.  That goes for the lettering too.
• Draw and cut out the perforated edge around the stamp
• There's also a chance for parents  (or grandparents) to explain the old currency if you take a pre-'65 stamp as your model.
• To get the colour from a Stanley Gibbons or suchlike, you have to work out the colour code from the written information that follows the stamp; so it becomes a reading exercise implicitly. The idea of monochrome stamps that we had in the past is a new idea to kids today. Some of the students I had did do monochromatic colourings, others went their own way, being imaginative about it.
• What to do with your drawing?  Some thoughts: Stick it or a couple onto your letter box and lacquer it/ them appropriately to protect from the elements. Decorate an object with a drawing or drawings of stamps cut out to fit. Laminate it/them onto a work desk. Use as a cover for a stamp album.
• Or manipulate and edit the stamp on the computer. Kids are pretty savvy about that. 

We thank Jim for sharing his activity with us.  Last we spoke with him, he was going to contact Australia Post to see if his students’ drawings could be displayed somewhere and in Jim’s words ‘I am sure it would do them a lot of good to get a response from what was basically a real communication writing exercise on their part’.

From the editor of YourKidsEd

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