Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description Internet Resources

• Grade level: Upper elementary and middle school.

• Subject Area: Science and social studies.

Brief Description

    Students send letters to their local and state legislators critiquing their voting record on environmental issues and sharing their own views on these important issues.
Objectives

    Students will:

• Locate their local or state legislator's address - postal or e-mail.
• Practice writing skills by crafting a letter to one of their legislators.
• Participate in the democratic process by sharing their views with local politicians.

Materials and Resources

    In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer (PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or dial-up software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but perhaps Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above) and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.

1. Special hardware requirements: none.
2. Special software requirements: none.
3. Internet access: low-speed (less than 28,800 BPS via phone).

Activity Description

• Students work in groups or pairs to craft a letter to one of their representatives critiquing their voting record on environmental issues of interest to the students. Encourage students to formulate these letters with a beginning, middle, and end, and to include relevant information from the research they did on these representatives in prior lessons. Students should use resources they gathered from their Internet research to support the positions they take in their letters.

• Use the Web resources below to gather e-mail address information. If Internet access is not available, use the local phone book or other printed resources to get the street address and phone number.

• Students contact their state or local representatives by e-mail, by regular mail, or by phone using information from the Web resources below.

• Encourage students to continue following the voting record of their local and state legislators on environmental issues, and communicating with them on a regular basis about their views.

Internet Resources

• United States House of Representatives Member Directory
  [http://www.house.gov/mbr_dir/membr_dir.html].
  This directory of representatives is organized by state.

• Senators with Constituent E-mail addresses
  [http://www.senate.gov/senator/membmail.html].
  The Senate Website.

• House of Representatives Website
  [http://www.house.gov/].
  The House of Representatives Website

• Senate Website
  [www.senate.gov/].
  The Senate Website.

Back to Investigating Environmental Legislation Lesson Plans