This month, after studying a variety of text examples and practicing writing fiction stories and nonfiction paragraphs with partners, students got to choose their own holiday writing pieces to complete independently. Some students chose to research about holidays in different countries and then write informational paragraphs. Other students chose to create their own fictional holiday stories, using a story map. Then, students learned how to do basic formatting in Word and typed their stories on the laptops for the first time. Finally, each student designed his/her own stained glass picture to go with their writing. We examined models of stained glass windows in Salt Lake City, such as the ones located in the Union Pacific train station downtown and the Cathedral of the Madeleine, to help us design and color our own. Below are a few pictures of students sharing their final writing products with each other.
