Everyone has a good memory of meeting Santa in his or her childhood. How to keep the memory deeply inside the mind or how to have a practical action to beautify the good memory is a meaningful task for a child. As a teacher, we can help them make the dream into their real life. However, being a Santa or giving them a gift by spending a lot of money is too difficult to do. After discussion, we two teachers decide to lead students to write a letter to Santa individually.

Before Class-
First, we give students a note of what to prepare before writing the letter.They need to surf the Internet to get the translation of their own address in Hsinchu. They need to copy it down. Besides that, a letter for writing, a mail envelope, and some color pens are needed.
Students need to think about what to write to the Santa. Teachers suggest them to divide the letter into three paragraphs. In order to let Santa know something about them, the first paragraph is to do a brief introduction of them. At the very first week of this semester, they have learned how to do a self-introduction in English. It’s another opportunity to practice it again.
For the second paragraph, students need to let Santa know about their country. They have to tell Santa where they are from, what the famous scenic spots their county has, what the famous food they can eat if Santa comes to their country to be their guest.

During Class-
Students need to paste the notice on the writing book. Then they need to learn how to arrange the long address into four lines. The first line is their first name and last name. The second line is the number and the lane, street, or road. They often forget the abbreviation dot. Teachers need to remind them of some details about the coma, and the dot.
For the address of Santa, we set the same address for them to mail to. It is said that Santa from Canada is the friendliest one and students will have the most chances to hear from the Santa.
As for the content inside the letter, students need to have a draft first. And the teacher needs to check if there is something wrong with the word spelling,grammar or thepunctuation usage.
The closing of asking Santa to write back is very important. They need to ask for a gift politely and they also need to express their gratitude.
Students need to check if they have the greeting, the body, the closing and the correct sign off. After this, they need to put all the information on theletter. If there is enough time, some decoration on the letter or the envelope will impress Santa. The stamp is also needed to paste on the top right side of the envelope.
When students finish the letter, they need to go to the teacher to have a photo in order to have a memory or you can say it’s a proof to write a letter to Santa when you are very young.

After Class-
Teachers make the individual photo, team photo, class photo and then collect all the letters, go to the post office and mail them to Santa.Writing a letter to Santa is an unforgettable memory for students. Teachers need to make as more photos to be the proof as possible. After this, just be patient and wait for the Santa to write you back. It’s almost the end of November. For the whole December, it’s a waiting season.
“Santa wrote a letter back to me!” said excitedly from one student. Recently before Christmas and after Christmas, one after one, students got the mail from Santa. They took them to school and share the happiness with everyone. Although some students haven’t got the letter till now, students feel warm and believe that there is a real Santa in the far far away land outside the small island.

Reflection-
Building a Christmas dream is always a good thing for a child. Keeping the good memory in the childhood is also a wonderful experience. This is the first time we two teachers teach and help students mail the letters to Santa. We made the decision in the middle of November. At the time, we worried that if we let students prepare the stamps by themselves, will they have time to do it? If we buy stamps for them and ask money from them, is it a trouble?
Each of us has almost two hundred students. In order to avoid the trouble and make sure everyone can get the chance to mail to Santa, we spend our own money to buy all the stamps for students. Can you guess how much it is? The postage for mailing to the European country is 17NT dollars, 13NT is for Australia or New Zealand, and 9NTis for Hong Kong. Each of us pays more than three thousand dollars for the stamps in this activity.
For next time, in order to save our money, we have a better idea to do this. In the beginning of a new semester, we tell students to prepare an airline envelope, a letter paper, a stamp (different postage for different areas). They need to put the letter paper and the stamp into the envelope and write the name on the back of the envelope. Teachers put all the well-prepared envelopes together. Before the Christmas time, hopefully, everyone is ready for doing the job.
The other problem we had for this time is the address of Santa. At the very beginning of the activity, we have all the 360 students write to the same Santa in Canada. But the news in November said that the postmen in Canada went on a strike to express their dissatisfaction of their working environment. They would delay or ignore the airmails from other countries. It was such a thunderbolt on us.
We started to look for some other “Santas” for students to mail to. Fortunately, we collected a lot of different Santa’s addresses on the Internet. Students choose their favorite country and change the address on the envelope.

Final Exam-
After this activity, we still wanted to give a deeper impression on students. So we told the students the Christmas mail would be appeared on the final exam. They need to practice more about the address, the envelope and the content of the writing letter. With this, it’s a more complete ending of this topic. For we teachers and students, we really benefit a lot from this valuable experience.

Some photos about the activity:

A note for students	Teacher’s ppt preparation before class
The address on the envelope	The pictures and sentences inside
The practice on the homworkbook	The real task on the mailing paper
Buying a lot of stamps for students	Asking the lady for help in the post office
The final check before mailing it out	The picture of the whole class with the mail
A letter back from Slovakia	A letter back from France
A letter back from Austria	A letter back from Hong Kong
The practice part of the final exam	The last part of the final exam