Fifth Grade Tries Their Hand at Creative Writing

Our class is deep in the writing process. Students are using lessons, taught by both their teacher, Mrs. Watson, and their pre-service teacher, Mrs. Swift, to write essays about varied weather subjects . Violent weather patterns, such as tornadoes, hurrcanes, volcanic eruptions and mudslides are popular. Other students are writing about snow, rain and wind. Using the Internet, the students are incorporating a variety of graphics and photographs discovered there to illustrate the printed text. Several students chose the nationally reported Peak's Creek disaster that happened only a mile or two from their own homes as their subject.

Mrs. Swift is also teaching a five lession unit using "Writing Workshop." The students are composing and handwriting a fanciful book about a chosen animal who reads and writes and who meets the writer through a "Personals Ad" in the newspaper. This leads to an adventure the fifth grader creates. The student also uses computer graphics and illustrations . We see a Trout who begs a boy to help the fish look for new sources of food in a stream bed, and a girl who nurses the baby of a gorilla in the mountains of Africa back to health.