Brief Description

Students will write a short story with well-developed characters, setting, and plot describing the settlement of North America by English colonists during the early 17th century.  The story will describe reasons for settlement, environmental conditions, social conditions, and economic factors related to colonial life. Students will strive for historical and geographical accuracy and meet the standards of writing conventions.  The papers will be submitted to The Write Source for publication.

Standards and Frameworks

Technology Standards

• 3T-E1. Use formatting capabilities of technology tools for communicating and illustrating
• 3T-E3 Publish and present information using technology tools.
• 4T-E2. Use technology tools for individual and collaborative writing, communication and publishing activities to create curricular related products for audiences inside and outside the classroom
• 4T-E3. Collaboratively use telecommunications and online resources

• 1SS-E5. Describe the causes, course, and consequences of early European exploration of North America.
• 1SS-E6. Describe the political, religious, and economic aspects of North American colonization.
• 3SS-E3. Describe and locate the major natural and human features that define places and regions in the United States.
• 4SS-E1. Use basic economic concepts such as trade, opportunity costs, specialization, voluntary exchange, and price incentives to examine historical events.

Academic

• Following lessons and reading on early English colonization of North America, students will write a short story in which they demonstrate an understanding of social, economic and environmental conditions on settlement and meet standard conventions of writing with minimum errors.

• After an exploration of web publishing sites in the computer lab and practice using Microsoft Word, students will use keyboard skills, and editing tools to revise and publish a previously written short story that meets the standards for publication on the visited sites.

• Students will be familiar with Microsoft Word for creating, editing, saving and printing.
• Students will visit at least two web-publishing sites.

The United States: Adventures in Time and Space or similar text
Writers Express or similar text
Writing paper and pencil or pen
Computer equipped with Word and a printer.  A lab situation is preferred.

Accommodations for Special Needs

SEI (Sheltered English Instruction) students may dictate the story after development of outline and may receive extra teacher assistance.

Students with IEP for writing may receive extra assistance from resource and classroom teacher, may modify the length and scope of the assignment and may be allowed extra time for completion.

Advanced students will more fully explore the topic, include higher-level thinking and make fewer errors in conventions.

Procedures

• This lesson is based on completion of chapters in a Social Studies text dealing with European settlement of North America.
• Students attempting this assignment should already be familiar with the writing process and the genre of short story.
• Inform the students that they will write a short story about a group of about 100 English colonists arriving in North America in the early part of the 1600’s.  This will be a work of realistic fiction.
• Using material familiar to all students, such as a read-aloud book or a whole class reading assignment, conduct an exploration of character traits.  Solicit physical description, personality traits, abilities, values, interests, beliefs, and any other characteristics important to the understanding of characters in the shared story.  Assign students to create a main character and a few supporting characters ( about three) to fit into the story described above.  Student characters should be well developed and described just as the characters in the shared story.
• During subsequent lessons, discuss and develop setting and plot.  The setting as assigned is still pretty vague.  Students may chose a particular year and settlement, such as Jamestown or Plymouth, or they may make up a non-existent settlement For the assignment let students decide the length of time that passes and the breadth of the setting.  It could be below deck on a ship, and begin and end in one afternoon, or it could be in a settlement with various sites and cover one or more years. One lesson period is spent on characters, one on setting, and one on plot.
• On the fourth day, the students begin the first draft.  The writing and revising will take about five periods.  During these periods help and advise as needed.  Students should use the text for help to get accurate details about the period.
• When students have “finished” they will self evaluate on the rubric 6+1 Trait Writing Model from Rubistar (see assessments).
• Next they will exchange papers with a partner and peer evaluate using the same rubric.
• Finally, they will submit the “final” draft. Evaluate it and return it.
• At least two lab sessions will be set aside for students to type a final draft, and time on the in-class computer will be scheduled as needed.  Students will use Word to demonstrate proficiency with the editing features of the software and to prepare a published version of the story.
• Students will be required to complete a District permission form and a Write Source permission form before work can be submitted for publication on The Write Source site.


http://www.thewritesource.com
 The Write Source
 PO Box 460
 Burlington, WI 53105
This site has student work and describes the process for submission, which is snail mail.

Students writing will be assessed using the 6+1 Trait Writing Model. There is a customizable rubric available at the site http://rubistar.4teachers.org/. It can be viewed and copied using ID#518726. Student work will be evaluated on specific aspects of content, voice, sentence fluency, conventions, organization, and word choice, as well as historical detail.