FireFighters Pen Pal Club

The Weirton Fire Department was approached by Mrs. Theresa Paterra, a teacher at Wellsburg Primary School in Wellsburg, WV.  Mrs. Paterra has formed a "Firefighters Pen Pal Club" in her class.  Periodically throughout the year, she assigns her students writing projects that involve corresponding in "Pen Pal" fashion with members of the Fire Department via traditional "snail mail" (sorry USPS). This education tool seeks to strengthen the student's traditional writing abilities in an otherwise digital world.

Members of the fire department enjoyed receiving and writing letters to the group and anxiously await the next batch of letters which should be arriving sometime in April.

Below are the members of the 2017 FireFighters Pen Pal Club. L to R: Nevaeh, Jaylin, Wyatt, Shaylen, & Hayden

FF Pen Pal Club 2017 Wellsburg Elem

Below, Firefighter Ed Eskridge, one of the "Pen Pals" that participated in January, puts the final touches on a response letter.

FFPPC Jan 2017
The next round of Firefighter Pen Pal letters were received in April.  This batch included "Acrostic Poems" that the student pen pals wrote for their firefighter counterparts.  To be very honest, no one at the firehouse remembered what an "acrostic" poem was, so we had to research it. (Thank you Google!!).  As it turns out, an acrostic poem is one in which the first letter of each line spells out a word. In the acrostic poems we received from the students, the spelled out word was "FIREFIGHTERS".

In addition to our response letters, the firefighters also sent an acrostic poem of our own back to the students.  Ours spelled out "TIGERS", which is the mascot for Wellsburg Primary School.

Below, Firefighter Phil Martin works on a response letter to a member of the FF Pen Pal Club.

Weirton firefighter Phil Martin works on a letter to the Firefighters Pen Pal Club

Below, Firefighter Brandon Scott is finishing the "Acrostic Poem" that was sent back to the student pen pals in May.

Weirton firefighter Brandon Scott works on an Acrostic Poem for the FF Pen Pal Club
Weirton Fire Fighters just received some pictures and a video from their Pen Pals in the FireFighters Pen Pal Club.  We sure did enjoy corresponding with our new friends during the school year.

Now that the school year is wrapping up, we wish our 2016-17 Pen Pals a SAFE and SUPER FUN-FILLED SUMMER!!  And challenge them to keep up their "Pen Pal Skills" throughout the years to come!

As for the Fire Fighters, we are going to give our pen pal skills a break and focus on jobs around the station, like: washing the fire engines, testing the fire hoses, cleaning the fire ladders, and waxing the fire boat, just to mention a few tasks...   meanwhile, we await the next pen pal letters in the fall... Check back then for more pen pal news!!!!

The members of the 2016-17 FireFighters Pen Pal Club in May of 2017 after their final writing project. Here they have displayed the FireFighter's acrostic poem on their artwork board.

Our Pen Pals at Wellsburg Primary sent us another picture toward the end of the school year.

Room 103 at Wellsburg Primary School. This is Mrs. Paterra's classroom, where all the "pen pal magic" happens.

This is where all of the Pen Pal "magic" happens... It's Mrs Paterra's room at WPS

Below is the Acrostic Poem that the Fire Fighters came up with and sent to the members of the FireFighters Pen Pal Club. Not too bad for our first try at an acrostic. It even made it onto the artwork board.

This is the Acrostic Poem that the FF's came up with and sent to the members of the Pen Pal Club.