Nonfiction Writing

Back in November/ December our writing unit was on informational text. Our class decided to write informational articles on planets. This tied in nicely with our solar system unit that we had just finished up. The students were to produce a newsletter that included; headings, photographs, captions, and vocabulary.

Our county is Google EVERYTHING! We have a set of 30 Chromebooks to use on our grade level and we have been learning the ins and outs of them. I wanted my students to create their newsletter in Google Docs. I went ahead and searched on Google for a Newsletter templates Google Docs and selected a newsletter template for the students to use and shared it with them using Google Classroom.

Google Classroom is fabulous because it automatically makes a copy of the document for the student and makes a folder in my Google Drive to house all of their projects. This eliminates the hassle of the students having to make a copy of the document and sharing it back with me. 

We had spent 2 weeks researching the planets using books, encyclopedias, and the internet. This is the first time my students had used the internet to research so we had to spend a lot of time talking about how to research effectively. 

Once we had our researched typed into the templates, the students learned how to highlight text and link it to the definition of the word. This concept took some time to master, but once they caught on they were on a roll. 

Their final projects turned out pretty well for their first attempt! Click here to check out a finished newsletter about Saturn!!