In the informational/ research unit the students start the unit by reading the text Surviving Hitler. As a whole class, we read articles relating to the Holocaust. This allows the students to be exposed to informational text and different formats. Once done with the text, the students then go over author's purpose, text features, and text structures. We look at multiple articles as a class and then, eventually, independently. The students then go over how to create a thesis and we start to prepare for informational/ research writing. This year, we decided to have the student do research on a conspiracy theory of their choice. The students then practiced their communication skills by presenting their projects to the class.