Students started new writing pieces this past week. They will be working on expository writing. We will be writing two pieces under this category. The first will be an informational article about something we know a lot about and our second piece will be a research paper that coincides with research on a country for the third grade district Common Core unit. Our first day being exposed to the expository format, students read a nonfiction text with me about Life in a Tide Pool and a third grade sample piece about the ballet. We noted that expository writing is meant to teach you something and that it is full of facts. After working as a whole class, we went to practice finding expository writing/informational articles independently by looking through magazines. Students were very excited to be reading a new resource and asked to keep the magazines for their independent reading later. When we were finished exploring, students came back together to share their findings. They answered two questions: How do you know this was an informational article? What did it teach you while you read it?
