Meet My Pen Pal Role Play Activity

Students imagine visiting a pen pal in China and create a slideshow about the trip. Presenting their travel story gives them practice organizing details and speaking to an audience.
Grades
Grades 4–8
Pages
6
File type
Microsoft PowerPoint
Editable
Yes

Updated Jun 08, 2022

Subject
ELA, Writing
Topic
Pen pal project, Travel presentation
Resource types
Projects, Presentations
Editable
Yes
Standards
W.5.6

Product description

From the author

In Meet My Pen Pal, students imagine visiting a friend in China and create a five-slide travel presentation covering a city, travel arrangements, a restaurant, a sport and another activity. They add pictures and sentences, then present their story to the class.

The six-slide PowerPoint download provides directions, requirements, public-speaking tips and a grading rubric.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

  • Plan and write a five-slide narrative describing an imagined trip, including logistics (cost, dates, flights), a restaurant choice, a sport, and a shared activity.

  • Compose a 10-word-or-longer descriptive sentence for each slide of the presentation.

  • Deliver a memorized oral presentation using public-speaking techniques such as eye contact and an attention-grabbing opener.

Teaching tips

  • Share the rubric with students before they begin drafting so they know their presentation will be scored on requirement completion, creativity, speech delivery, grammar, and vocabulary separately.

  • Review the public-speaking tips slide as a mini-lesson before presentation day, since it covers concrete techniques like using an attention-grabbing opener and rehearsing in a mirror.

  • Clarify the late-work policy up front — the rubric and requirements both note that late printed scripts lose points on a sliding scale by how many days late.

Skills covered

  • Narrative/descriptive writing — students write a 10-word-or-longer sentence for each of five slides describing an imagined trip.

  • Research-based invention — students name a specific city, restaurant, sport, and activity to make the imagined trip concrete.

  • Oral presentation — students memorize and deliver their travel story aloud, following included public-speaking guidance.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

How much of the trip's details are students expected to look up versus invent?

The directions frame it as an imagined trip — students name a city, restaurant, sport, and activity as part of the story, with no citation or outside-source requirement stated in the file.

How is the final grade split between the written slides and the spoken delivery?

The rubric scores five separate criteria — Requirement completion, Creativity, Speech delivery, Grammar, and Vocabulary — so both the written slides and the live presentation affect the grade.

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Curriculum

Standards, concepts & topics

Standards

  • W.5.6

Core concepts

  • Travel narrative writing

  • Oral presentation skills

  • Rubric-based assessment

  • Role play

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