Ferris-Computer Applications

When sending an email, you should follow a professional format. You’re not usually communicating with your friends or people with whom you have casual conversations. Instead, you are sending a professional, business-like email to request information or provide information necessary.

Regardless of whether or not you’re using a computer, laptop, or sending an email from your cell phone, the layout of the email is the same.

TO: the email address(es) of the people to whom you are sending the email

Cc: this line is for anyone that you want to have a copy of the email that you’re sending. They will know that you sent it to the original email in the “To:” line.

Bcc: “Blind carbon copy”: this line is for anyone you would like to copy an email to, but you don’t want the original recipient to know that you’re sending it. Think about a group text, but you don’t want anyone else to know who you’re sending the text to because you don’t want to share their numbers. Or if you want to send a group email, but you need to keep the other email addresses confidential.

Subject: This line is the subject of the email. For example: Subject: How to Send an Email, you will know that what you read in the body should be about how you send an email. You don’t want to leave the subject empty. You should use key words and not put so much detail that it looks like you’re sending the whole email in the subject line.

Body: This is where you type the content of your email.

You start with a greeting:

• Dear Mr./Ms. Person’s Last Name:
• Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening,
• To Whom It May Concern:
• (Hey, Hi, What’s Up, no greeting at all)–these are NOT ACCEPTABLE greetings

Then you write what your email is about (content). Use complete sentences but don’t get too wordy. Emails should be professional, but to the point. Your reader probably gets a ton of emails a day so they want to be able to read and go through them quickly.

Your last paragraph should always be a conclusion of some sort: “Thank you for your time in advance”; “Please contact me at your convenience.”

Closing: Just like you should never abruptly start an email, you should never just abruptly end an email. You should always provide a closing:

• Sincerely,
• Regards,
• Thank you,
• Cordially,

Proofread your work and make sure it looks good before you send it out.

Hi Everyone,

Hope you’re doing alright. You know how we’re always begging for a snow day or time off from school, or looking forward to a break!? Yeah, well, I don’t think this is what we had planned. I always welcome a break, but I would rather be prepared for it then for it to happen like this.

There’s a lot going on in my head as I’m sure there is with you as well. I have been struggling to figure out how I’m going to give you assignments that continue where we left off, knowing that if I don’t explain it or demonstrate it, it’s more of a struggle for you. I want you to learn; I don’t want you to lose what you’ve learned (I hope it’s still in your head), but I don’t want you to stress out about it either.

Even if you’re not in school, you are still learning. We learn each and every day. There is learning taking place in all aspects of your life, even if you don’t really see it that way.

So, here’s what we’re going to do. Every day, I’m asking you to do two things. One, I will post a question for you to respond to by email each day. You will use your school email, put the question in the subject line, and answer it in proper email format. Use Dear Ms. Ferris, as your greeting, answer the question in a complete sentence or two, then end the email with a closing (Sincerely, Regards, Your First and Last Name). We will start this tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18.

Secondly, I want you to keep a Google journal. You’re going to type, every day. You are going to provide me with some insight about how you go about your day, what you did and why you do it. I want you to provide me details. Don’t just tell me, “I washed dishes and then did homework.” Tell me what was going through your mind, if you were listening to music. Tell me that you struggled with the day and how, if you were able to, over come it. Tell me that you fought with your siblings to stay out of your room! Tell me that you had to run errands for your parents (if you had to walk to the store, went with them places, etc.).

I will be the only one that will be reading these. You can be as candid as you would like, but you have to write. You also have to follow the list of guidelines:

1. You have to be very detailed. A few sentences is never enough. Days are long and if you need to, keep a log of what you do throughout the day (8 a.m., I made breakfast of…and ate. Left the dishes in the sink for my mom to wash! 9 a.m., took my shower and cleaned my room. Had to do some laundry. I hate folding clothes but you know how moms are…they want us to do it, and then when we don’t do it right, we have to do it again! From 10-12 I was on Khan Academy working on SAT prep. Man, these questions are so difficult because I don’t understand what half of the words mean…)
2. You have to use complete sentences.
3. You have to have paragraphs.
4. You have to run spell check and proofread your work. This is not a group chat with your friends where you don’t care about capitalization and punctuation.
5. You do have to incorporate some of the things we learned in class (bulleted lists, numbered lists, setting tabs, adding page breaks).
6. Include a footer with your name and ID number. You don’t need to include the date in the footer, because you’re going to be using the date as your heading each day. Don’t put it in the header because in Google docs, you can’t create a different header for each page like you can in Word. Format…Paragraph Styles…Heading 1 for the date on each day’s page. I would suggest you format the heading AFTER you type your entry for the day. That way the whole document doesn’t end up in that format style.
7. You have until 11:59 p.m. each night to share it with me. This will be for Monday-Friday entries (Friday’s entry you can submit the following Monday). Read below to see how your entries will go.
8. When you complete your entry for the day, you’re going to share it with me via Google Docs. I will then provide feedback to you, and will include in the gradebook a completion grade. The only way you will not do well is if you don’t take this seriously and/or don’t do it at all.
9. You must use your school email to share the doc with me.
10. Save the file as Your last name First Name ID Journal Entries

Your first entry will be for today’s date (March 17, 2020), but you’ll be sending it to me tomorrow. The reason that I say this is because I don’t want you to not include what you did during the evening. So, before you go to bed tonight, just down in your notes on your phone or on a piece of paper what you’ve done for the day, and then tomorrow, when you get up, put together your journal entry and share it with me via Google docs. That’s your attendance as well. I don’t want you waiting until the end of the week to submit them all at once so I will also check to see what time it was shared with me because that will tell me if you submitted it to me on time.

Things you can do throughout the day:

• Care for your siblings
• Help your parents make meals (this incorporates some math, some language arts…measurements, reading directions in a recipe, following directions when you’re parents tell you to gather the ingredients if they don’t measure, etc.)
• Clean the house
• Do some art work, color, old school drawing with crayons or markers
• Watch a movie
• Read a book
• Play games (not electronic…Uno, Go Fish, Twister, Scrabble…the good games before everything went electronic! Although a few levels of Candy Crush never hurt to play either)
• Work out…walk around the block, ride your bikes
• Plan the menu for a week for your household; include the ingredients and create a shopping list for your parents. Then research which stores online have the ingredients for the cheapest price (you can create a table with this…hint hint…set tabs or use the grid box that I showed you guys before we left)
• Do some job searches. If you’re thinking about working this summer, search online for some job postings and see what the qualifications are.
• Organize things around the house.

There is so much that you can do. You’re just going to take your day-to-day, and you’re going to put it into words. It’s a good release too. Sometimes, just getting it out of your head and onto paper helps.

I’m sharing this with you via email and via Remind. Share your remind with someone in class so that they can subscribe too.

Email me with any questions or concerns that you may have. If you would like me to provide you with an example, I will work on my journal entry for today and share it with you via Google docs tomorrow.

We are in this together!

Sincerely,

Ms. Ferris

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