Informative writing is a new addition to our writing curriculum in Historical Literacy. Students will choose a topic they're most comfortable with and use that to research more information and to write an informative newsletter. We'll work through each step of the writing process slowly and carefully to ensure we're writing to the best of our abilities. 

This year we took a different approach to writing narratives. Students selected story elements such as, inciting incident, setting, problem, ending, and character traits. In order to create their story, they had to come up with events, a climax, and resolution to fit all of the cards they chose. The creativity and excitement for creating their own stories around a basic idea was so much fun to watch. The only trick was that their story had to be entirely realistic - something that could happen every day - and exciting enough for their audience to want more!  

Students were asked to write an argument that correlated to our big question - What does it mean to be an American? They were asked, "What does it mean to be a part of U.S. Culture?" Students defined culture using the cultural iceberg and then defined the U.S. culture based on items that make up a person's culture. Ultimately, students chose whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to be a part of our culture and provided evidence to support their opinion using facts.