Writing Assignment Description

In Unit 3, students bring to life classroom tools and habits of character as they work collaboratively to solve a classroom design challenge and answer the unit guiding question: "How do we create a magnificent thing?" In small groups, students plan, create, and revise a "magnificent" thing that fulfills a classroom need. Grounded in the learning and read-alouds of Units 1 and 2, students consider the guiding notion that people use tools and habits of character to create magnificent things. Students'understanding of the definition and use of tools from Tools by Ann Morris supports their choices and selection of classroom tools to do the job. In order to sketch a plan for their work, they revisit the girl in The Most Magnificent Thing to identify the process and the habits of character she used to make her creation.

While students engage in the hands-on work of creating a magnificent thing to satisfy a classroom need, they also pause to reflect and show what they know through informational writing. In the Unit 3 assessment, students independently demonstrate their writing skills by answering an on-demand writing prompt that asks them to describe a habit of character they used to create their magnificent thing for classroom use. (W.1.2). Before this assessment, writing instruction is scaffolded through teacher modeling and chunking of the performance task's informational writing piece. Finally, students share their magnificent things and written pieces with their classmates and other classroom visitors during an end of module celebration.

Curriculum:

From EL Education's ELA Curriculum G1:M3:U3