A Day in the Life of a Postperson
English
Introduction
This storyboard activity will help pupils to develop reading and writing skills. The word bank
contains words that pupils may not have come across before.
What happens to your mail once it has been posted in the postbox?
Learn more about what happens to your mail by looking at the Our People section on anpostschoolbag.ie.
Delivering your mail
When all the mail has been sorted into batches for each area at the Mails Centre, it’s packed into trays and cages
and sent by trucks to Delivery Service Units (DSU’s).
Early in the morning, our postperson, Angela goes to her Delivery Service Unit to collect and sort mail for
her delivery route. Mail going to other countries heads off to the airport to make its way around the world!
Mail is already being delivered when you are getting out of bed in the morning.
Your address is on a postal delivery route. Postpeople use bicycles, vans and go on foot to deliver mail along their
delivery route - rain, hail or shine - it all depends on where they are working.
Postpeople also collect mail which they bring back to the DSU. This mail is then transported onwards to the nearest
Mails Centre. It is here that processing of mail for next day delivery begins. Our postpeople collect and deliver over
2.5 million letters and parcels every day.
Word bank
delivery
service
business
customer
route
uniform
batch
mail
A Day in the Life of a Postperson
English
Think, pair, share
Look at the pictures and think about what is happening in them. In pairs, take turns to talk about what you can see.
Share what you decide as a pair is happening in each picture with the class.
A Day in the Life of a Postperson
English
Write about it
For younger classes:
Pick some of the pictures and use them to tell the story of a day in the life of a postperson. Stick them into your
copybook and then write a sentence or more to say what is happening in each picture.
For older classes/more able students:
Use the pictures and the information in the Our People Section on anpostschoolbag.ie to write a diary entry for a
postperson. Describe what a typical day for them is like at work – What they do? Where they go? Who they meet?
What challenges do they face etc? It should have some of the things you learned about on anpostschoolbag.ie but
you may also want to use your imagination a little.
Suggested Additional Tasks
• Watch the Journey of a Letter and Journey of a Parcel videos on anpostschoolbag.ie and complete the quizzes
afterwards.
• Organise a visit from your local postperson. Ask the class to prepare some questions for the visit e.g. ‘What is the
strangest thing you have ever delivered?’ ‘How many letters are delivered a day?’ etc.
• Write a fantasy, adventure or a mystery story about something that happens to a postperson during their day
delivering mail. For example:
-- When they post a letter through the letter box it transports them to another world.
-- When they get to the address it’s an abandoned house and they have to discover what happened.
-- They foil a robbery.
• Enter the An Post Handwriting Competition. Use the writing activity above or get your pupils to write their
own composition in any genre using the theme ‘A Day in the Life of a Postperson’. For more information visit
anpostschoolbag.ie/competition
A Day in the Life of a Postperson
English
Curriculum links
Aistear
Communicating
• Interact with other children and adults by listening, discussing and taking turns in conversation.
• Use language with confidence and competence for giving and receiving information, asking questions,
requesting, refusing, negotiating, problem solving, imagining and recreating roles and situations, and
clarifying thinking, ideas and feelings.
Exploring & Thinking
• Make marks and use drawing, painting and model-making to record objects, events and ideas.
• Express feelings, thoughts and ideas through improvising, moving, playing, talking, writing, story-telling,
music and art.
• Use letters, words, sentences, numbers, signs, pictures, colour, and shapes to give and record information, to
describe and to make sense of their own and others’ experiences.
Primary
English
• Expand his/her vocabulary and develop a command of grammar, syntax and punctuation.
• Explore and develop ideas and concepts through talk, directed discussion and writing.
• Express intuitions, feelings, impressions, ideas and reactions in response to real and imaginary situations
through talk, discussion and writing.
• Organise, clarify, interpret and extend experience through oral language activity and writing.
• Compose, relate and write his/her own stories and poems.
• Write for different purposes and different audiences.
• Write in a variety of genres appropriate to school and outside needs.
• Learn to edit and refine writing and develop a sense of appropriate presentation.
• Develop a personal style of writing and learn to distinguish and to use appropriate levels of formality.
• Share writing and responses to reading experience with other children and adults.
Gaeilge
• Téacsanna gairide pearsanta agus cruthaitheacha a scríobh.
• Tuiscint a fháil ar phróiseas na scríbhneoireachta trí athdhréachtú a dhéanamh.
• Tuiscint a fháil ar ghramadach na Gaeilge trí úsáid a bhaint as an teanga i gcomhthéacsanna réalaíocha.