This product was part of a learning expedition on tools, in which students learned to identify tools and their uses and learned about the wider world through the study of tools.
After researching bees as part of a learning expedition, students crafted a book to help people understand the importance of bees to the production of food and the impact of Colony Collapse Disorder.
As a culmination of learning about their lives and the greater world, students wrote "I am" poems. They used figurative language, spacing, repetition, and breaking the rules of grammar as poetic authors.
Prior to graduation, students present a speech to a panel of students, staff, and community members articulating lessons learned in their jourrney through school and their plans for the future.
Following close reading and rhetorical analysis of texts in the genre of satire, students argued about how the language and style choices of various authors help to establish their messages.
Using the novel Fahrenheit 451 and various informational texts, students addressed the guiding question—Has Ray Bradbury’s vision of the future come to fruition?
As part of the unit, Finding Home: Refugees, students read the novel Inside Out and Back Again, plus another book of their choice, to explain the universal refugee experience.
This piece is a freewrite created before the advent of the Common Core. Although the task wasn't designed to address Common Core standards, it is a strong representation of third grade Writing standard 3.
Using the EL Education unit, Finding Home: Refugees, students analyzed the novel Inside Out & Back Again to argue how it relates to the universal refugee experience.