CT-N Legislative Letter Writing Exercise
One of the
simplest ways of helping your
government make better and wiser
decisions is to let your state
leaders know how you feel about
an issue that is important to
you or about proposed
legislation. Each or your state
leaders now have their own
web-page that contains their
contact information. You can
search for your legislators and
leaders here:
https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp
Teachers
This is a great writing exercise. You can print out the
names of the representatives and
senator from your district along
with their address and
distribute it to the class or
have your students look them up.
Next, ask your students to
choose an issue to write about.
They should write their letter
either supporting or opposing
the issue and explain why citing
examples of how the issue may
impact their lives.
Review their letters and send
them out. Use the school's
return address so that you can
monitor the responses and see
their faces when you hand them a
response letter. Have the
students share it with the
class.
Tools
Your class can choose an issue
from a short list that you
create or make it a homework
assignment and let them research
an issue that is important to
them. There are several places
to look for ideas and subject
matter.
-
Inside
CT-N's Legislative
Communications Center, you
can click on the
"Legislation" link which
will list all of the current
proposed bills that
legislator is working on.
-
You can
visit our
Media Links page
for a listing of on-line
newspapers and find a local
issue.
-
You can also
click here for the most
recent "Major Issues" report
from the Office of
Legislative Research
highlighting the significant
issues to come before the
legislature.
Also, here are
some helpful guides for your
students:
-
Salutations
page which shows examples of
how to address the envelope
and write the greeting
-
Sample
legislative letter using
proper business format (pdf)
-
Do's &
don'ts of legislative letter
writing (pdf)
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