Unit 5 marks the midway point of IEW’s nine writing units. Rather than asking students to create key word outlines from written text, Unit 5 instead has students ask themselves questions based on images to create their outlines. It’s a fun unit to encounter during the holiday season with all of its festivities and traditions.
It’s a flexible unit. Students can write a 3-paragraph event description from a sequence of three pictures, or they can write three paragraphs from only one photo. Instead of having a picture to aid them for the first and third paragraphs, students use their imaginations to decide what happened, both prior to the events in the picture as well as after. Conversely, students can simply write one paragraph describing the events in the picture.
This month we thought it would be fun to provide an image that reflects the season: a picture of the first Thanksgiving. Filled with lots of characters, there’s ample opportunity for students to exercise creativity as they imagine what’s happening in the scene.
Public domain http://www.clipartpal.com/clipart_pd/holiday/thanksgiving/firstthanksgiving_10019.html
We hope you enjoy this with your students. If any of your students write about this picture, please share their work with us. We would love to see what everyone creates!
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at IEW!
